Budget 2022: ‘Na Our Great Grandchildren Go Pay Buhari’s Debt’ (2)

By BBello Zaki

After days of several telephone calls and text messages to our economic managers and their spin masters (you have the privilege of calling them spokesperson, I was once misfortune to have served in that capacity) but I couldn’t get adequate response to report to readers on how the huge debt acquired by this administration was used or misused, as I promised in my last outing:

Our economic masters are on holidays both at home and abroad – abroad? A you surprise? Plane loads of Nigeria’s landlords depart from the country’s international airports daily in seasons like this, to various parts of the world where the weather is more friendly; they holiday in exotic resorts around the world such as the French Pyrenees where the world billionaires go for summer; they suntan with their families and mistresses on various beaches around the globe, while their children sojourn in Disney lands in Europe and America during their long vacs – Nigeria’s elites are reputed to beat the world in number of private jets at the annual World Economic Forum rituals in Davos, Switzerland. 

As I couldn’t get these people to talk, I resorted to confiding on a senior colleague who read my last piece in which I promised readers talking to the powers to be about what happened to the over U.S$150billion they borrowed in the name of Nigerians in the last eight years. This colleague of mine rebuked me for trying to officially verify from the hosts’ mouth, as according to him, I will certainly meet not only a brick wall, but a stonewall, he therefore suggested that I should investigate by empiricism, that means gathering and analysing established facts on what supposed to be done with the borrowed funds, what has been done and what has not been done. This is certainly a very big, tall order, but I have done my best as I will summerise below.

The whole essence of borrowing is to provide infrastructure, stabilise and grow the economy and alleviate poverty in the land. On infrastructure, power supply has not improved, from 2015 when this administration came into being to date, even though it was officially said that the country’s grid power capacity has increased significantly since 2015: that the installed grid power generation capacity has reached 13,000MW from 8000MW in 2015; transmission capacity has increased to 8000MW from 5000 in 2015, while the distribution system have the capacity to evacuate 5500MW of power, as it was grown from 4500MW in 2015. Yet,  the Central Bank of Nigeria, said Nigerians spend about US$14billion on electricity generating sets and fuel annually.

No road of up to 500 kilometre length was constructed by this administration; the longest being the continuation of Coastal Road (a little over 200 kilometers), that is still under construction, that runs from Koko in Delta State through Okiti-Pupa in Ondo State to Ijebu Waterside in Ogun State and terminate at Epe/Lekki corridor in Lagos State; the road was awarded by the previous administration in 2010 and started by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC); the administration has completed the 106.341 kilometer third phase of Kano – Maiduguri Road; Section II, 142.2 km dualization of Section of Kano-Maiduguri road (between Shuwarin and Azare ) that connects Jigawa and Bauchi states; 185 kilometer Sokoto-Tambuwal-Jega- Makera road; Phases I and II of Vandeikya-Ogbudu Cattle Ranch Road, and the 26.27 km Nnewe-Uduma-Uburu highway with a 14 km branch to Ishiagu that connects Enugu and Ebonyi states.  It was officially said that there are 13 federal roads under rehabilitation, and the 1.63 kilometres long Second Niger Bridge was constructed and commissioned, and the 11.8 kilometre-long third mainland bridge in Lagos was rehabilitated.

On the railways, the Abuja-Kaduna (187 km), Lagos-Ibadan (156 km) and Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail-lines, that were left at an advanced stage of completion by the previous government, were completed and commissioned by this administration. The following rail projects announced by Buhari administration were put on hold due to the administration’s inability to access foreign loans: Ibadan- Kano; Abuja-Itakpe; Eastern railway corridor that links 14 states, running from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri (2044.1 km); Kano-Dambatta- Kazaure- Daura-Mashi-Katsina-Jibia- Maradi (Niger Republic), and the promised connection of every state capital with a rail line. New airport terminals in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt were constructed. The administration also said it has completed housing projects in 35 states, but I can only vouch for its 20 houses under construction in my state’s capital, Dutse.   

On the economy, inflation that was galloping in Jonathan’s administration is today racing very fast, as certain basic necessities are very fast going out of the rich of the common man; the value of the naira had fallen more than 400% between 2015 (Average exchange rate in 2015 was N197.8763 to the US dollar (Exchange rate. Org.uk) to the end of 2022, Nigeria has, since 2016 continuously retained the World Bank’s infamous title of World Poverty Capital, as four out of every ten Nigerians live below the poverty line of $1.9 per day. Education is in tatters: university students wasted 10 months of this year out of classroom as their lecturers went on strike for their unremitted rights and the welfare and conducive learning environment for their students; while five every ten school going children in the world now reside in Nigeria. Our government hospitals had transcended from the proverbial ‘mere consulting clinics’ to the level where there are no longer even the doctors to consult in the clinics.

Now, what happened to the over US$150 billion borrowed in the last 8 years? The average U.S$50 billion (US$40billion oil revenue plus US$10 billion non-oil revenue) nation’s annual earnings, and the Internally generated Revenue that averages more than N1.3 trillion (about US$3.1 billion) annually in the period?

Ms Naja’atu Mohammed, a serving Commissioner with the Nigeria Police Service Commission, had dropped a bomb shell last Sunday, where she told pressmen that money looted by appointees of government (not civil servants like the suspended Account General of the Federation) in the last eight years is enough to pay every citizen N732,000. This is a privileged information, lets do a little arithmetic:

Nigeria’s population as at that day was 218,787,813 (based on Worldometer’s elaboration of the latest United Nations data). The official Naira/dollar exchange rate was: US$1 to N446.408; therefore N732,000 share of the loot per citizen multiplied by 218,787,813 Nigeria’s population, is equal to N160,152,679,116,000 (One hundred and sixty trillion, one hundred and fifty-two billion, six hundred and seventy nine million and one hundred and sixteen thousand Naira), which is equal to US$358,758,532, 813.032 (Three hundred and fifty-eight billion, seven hundred and fifty-eight million, five hundred and thirty-two thousand and eight hundred and thirteen American dollars three cents) is the amount Ms Mohammed alleged to have been stolen from the Nigeria’s treasury under the watchful eyes of President Muhammadu Buhari, whose one of the major cardinal principles of his administration is to fighting corruption: Could the borrowed US$150 billion be part of this alleged loot?