By Uche Mbah
Former Presidential candidate, Kingsley Moghalu, has attacked the Federal Government’s penchant for enslaving future generations through borrowing, saying we need competent hands to run the country.
This Magazine reported that the Federal government has projected a borrowing plan till 2025, with intent to bring the national debt to over 50 trillion Naira by borrowing N12 trillion by 2023. This has been met with outrage, especially in the Social media.
Reacting to the news, Moghalu, a former Central Bank Deputy Governor, said the proposal makes him weep for Nigeria.
“The irresponsible borrowing by the Buhari @NigeriaGov is nothing short of madness. Plans to borrow another N12 trillion by 2023, bringing public debt to N50 trillion, makes me weep for our country. We need an economically competent government in 2023”, he tweeted in his verified twitter handle.
“Nigeria’s borrowing is not sustainable. Forget the nonsense about debt-to-GDP ratio still being limits at 35%, rising to 42% by 2026. What matters for a developing country is ability to pay relative to revenues and the cost of debt servicing relative to investment in development.
“At 90 kobo of every one Naira we earn going to debt repayments, there is nothing left to invest in education and healthcare (human capital), the building blocks of any society. Borrowing supposedly to build infrastructure that can’t yield revenues to repay the debt is wrong.
“Yeye dey smell. This is very bad economics. According to @IMFNews our revenue-to-GDP ratio will decrease from 7.2% in 2021 to 6.5% in 2026, and general government expenditure-to-GDP ratio will decline from 13.3% in 2021 to 12.6% percent in 2026. Bottom line, revenues going down, ability to spend on essential services going down. Nigeria needs economic salvation!”, he concluded.
