Nigeria Is Poor, Borrowing Is Our Only Option — Senate President

On Thursday, Senate President Ahmad Lawan briefed President Muhammadu Buhari on the National Assembly’s plans, noting following the meeting that Nigeria is a poor country that has no choice but to borrow to build infrastructure.

After the meeting at the presidential palace in Abuja, he fielded questions from reporters and told them that the legislature would not be lenient in accepting Executive demands for loans.

Such requests, he claims, would be thoroughly scrutinized to ensure that they are essential, and once authorized, the loan’s use would be monitored through oversight.

“What I want to assure Nigerians here is that we are not going to be frivolously supporting or approving loans for the executive arm of government.

Whenever we have to approve any loan, we have to insist on the details of what projects will be funded by those loans. We’ll have to look at the conditions that are attached to the loans.

Our options are really very limited as a country. First, we don’t have the necessary revenues, Nigeria is poor, we shouldn’t deceive ourselves. Nigeria is not rich, given the circumstances we live in, given the challenges we have; our resources are so low, our revenues are so low and therefore, the option of not doing anything, just to sit because we have no money, we shouldn’t go for infrastructure development, is not even an option worthy of consideration,” he said.