By Chimezie Godfrey
The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has commenced a legal offensive to stop the proposed borrowing of the sum of $22.7b by the Buhari government.
The Coalition in press briefing on Monday in Abuja said it has also written to all the lenders to halt the loan request in view of the pending legal action.
According to the spokesperson of the Coalition, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, the loan being sourced from various international lenders is viewed by the opposition as a poorly executed plan to sell Nigeria into economic slavery and financial colonization for which Nigeria was redeemed by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.
He said, “We declare that the loan request by the President is the greatest singular act of disservice any leader could have done to this country.
“The loan request is riddled with project lopsidedness, lack of financial prudence, secrecy, plan to use loan for frivolous projects, over costing of projects, corruption, misapplication and incompetence.
“Nigerians must know that of this loan, consultants are expected to take an alleged whopping 40% of the loan while projects are to purportedly take the remaining 60%.
“We have taken this patriotic action because we believe that the President Buhari led corruption weakened government is just sourcing for funds to consolidate the APC government looting jamboree and use the left over to prosecute the 2023 general elections and not for the pretense of infrastructural development which it shoddily presented to the National Assembly.
“We therefore condemn the rubber stamp leadership of the Senate for forcing through the approval of the loan by the Senate even when Senators had not seen the breakdown of the loan expenses as required by law, ” he said.
Ugochinyere pointed out that with the upswing in borrowings, that Nigerians will one day wake up to find that they are now tenants in their own houses.
He noted that what President Buhari needs is competent hands and not $22.7b dollars foreign loan request, adding that the problem of Nigeria is not lack of money but lack of governance capacity in the regime which from all available indices has made the economy worse, security precarious and life very cheap.
“In view of the above, we call on the House of Representatives to redeem the image of the Nigerian Parliament already compromised by the Senate and serve as the true representative of the people by officially rejecting the dangerous loan request.
“Or ensuring the proposal is revisited by ensuring project balancing, removal of frivolous items that cannot repay the loan, removal of the outrageous alleged 40% payable to consultants and eventual reduction of the amount and setting up of mechanism to monitor the disbursement.
“In view of the lopsidedness of the projects, the frivolous nature of some of the projects, the lack of evidence of the economic visibility of the projects, inflated cost of the projects, lack of competency and transparency to monitor the disbursement, overbloated cost to consultants, the Nigeria opposition Coalition CUPP in pursuit of public interest of Nigerians including the unborn generation who are the ones largely to pay for the avarice of this government today launched multiple legal offensive with public interest suits filed at the Federal High Court seeking to stop the move by Buhari led federal government to borrow away the future of Nigeria and sell Nigeria into economic slavery and irredeemable financial hiatus with the $22.7b loan,” he stressed.
He disclosed that the opposition has also written letters of petitions to the foreign lenders to halt the process of continuing the consideration for the $22.7b loan.
“We have warned them to save their money for now and await the outcome of the court action which we believe will put paid to this fiscally irresponsible move.
“We have sued the federal government and the National Assembly in a separate suit and also sued the lenders to stop them and their agents from mortgaging our economic future by consummating a faulty loan deal which will put their depositors money in danger and also fund an ‘Owambe’ urge and shopping extravaganza of a government weakened by corruption and lack of competence and now hustling for loans on the street of China and Japan to cover their financial recklessness that has put Nigerian economy into dancing ‘Alanta’ dance of death,” he lamented.
