N44trn Debt: Senate President Says NASS Must Stop FG From Borrowing More

Ahmad Lawan, Nigeria’s Senate President has warned the next National Assembly not to approve further loans for the federal government. Lawan spoke amidst serious worries that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has borrowed too much.

The incremental rise in the nation total debt stock which now stands at over N44 trillion has largely been blamed on NASS described by not a few Nigerians to be too pliant to the administration. Critics of NASS said the lawmakers should have stopped the president from plunging the country into debt.

To underscore the dire situation, over N10 trillion has been borrowed by the government as budget deficit out of the N21 trillion Budget that has now been signed by President Buhari.

Recall that Lawan, who is the Chairman of NASS had at a time said the assembly under his watch would not reject any loan request from President Buhari.

But speaking on Thursday at an event in Abuja, the nation’s capital to mark his 64th birthday, the Senate President who has lost the quest to return to NASS urged lawmakers coming on board in the next dispensation to do everything on their part to stop further borrowing by the federal government.

Rather than borrowing, the outgoing Senate President said effort should be concentrated on generating more revenue, as well as plugging other revenue holes and stopping waste in government.

Lawan said, “For those of my colleagues who will be returning to the National Assembly, this should be a very important matter for the next Assembly to continue to deal with because we just cannot afford to continue borrowing.

“We should minimize it. I know it is not possible to eliminate it completely, but we should minimise it.

“The next Assembly should do that. I don’t know how, but definitely, from our experience of today and even before today, we can do better in getting more revenues for government to deploy for development.

“For some of our colleagues who are going to Government Houses, the issue is very clear.

“We need the Federal Government as well as the states to work more closely because whatever the Federal Government does, if there is no participation or support or complementarity from the states, it won’t work.”

He furher stated that: “One other challenge is the lack of sufficient revenues for government to undertake its numerous laudable and noble national development projects across the country.

“Most of what we do in terms of national development is to borrow funds for us to execute those projects.

“I think we have to work hard to improve our revenue generation and collection because it is not looking too sustainable that we tolerate people and some agencies of government, to misapply or not even declare the revenues they collect. We can’t continue with that.”

“For us in the Senate, we have decided that for the remaining part, we will continue to engage with our revenue-generating agencies until we get better outcomes from them. This is possible and has become imperative.

“Also, the concessions and waiver that the government has given, we need to review that. Now every kobo counts because we are in a very difficult situation.

“Where a waiver cannot be justified anymore because of our present circumstance, then, such waiver should be reversed or renegotiated.

“But definitely, we need to work hard to improve the revenue generation and collection by the MDAs and other government agencies,” the Senate President said.