"Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, Senator Ehigie Uzamere (ACN, Edo), said yesterday that the country’s total debt now stands at US$39.72 billion (N6.02 trillion), of which external and domestic debts are US$5.398 billion and N5.210 trillion, respectively.
He said during the inauguration of the committee that “this amount is unsettling and called for concern.”
This is even as the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, berated past administrations in the country for taking foreign loans for specific projects, which were later abandoned.
In his opening remarks at the committee’s inauguration, Uzamere urged governments at various levels to “focus more on borrowing for projects with self-repaying capacity and job generation rather than borrowing to finance gaps in budgets that are largely recurrent”
He noted that while the total debt of N6.02 trillion was more than the Federal Government’s annual budget, its external component translated to 2.76 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its domestic component translated to 17.53 per cent of GDP"I will join Uzamere to ask this question, "Do we have the capacity to repay this money considering our yearly revenue profile? What is the future value of the total debt in 10 years’ time, considering the way we are going? ( emphatic addition mine).
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Go here to read it in full and hope you don't end up crying for Nigeria Like I have found myself doing in recent times.
