Fayose condemns Buhari’s $2bn Chinese loan plan

The Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has flayed President Muhammadu Buhari’s scheduled trip to China to allegedly borrow $2bn (N1.84tn) loan to finance the 2016 budget.

Describing the move as an attempt to mortgage the future of Nigeria and its people, Fayose said the 2016 budget was not a reflection of the present economic reality in the country.

“By the time they borrow N1.84tn to fund their N6.06tn budget, I wonder how Nigeria will survive in 2017 when the Federal Government will be servicing debt with about 50 per cent of its budget,” Fayose said in a statement signed on Friday in Ado-Ekiti by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka.

He added that the budget was planned to fail.

He said, “In elementary economics, you don’t propose to spend more when your income reduces and I still can’t understand this Buharinomics in which Nigeria is going to spend N6.06tn with crude oil bench mark of $38 per barrel when the country budget was N4.5tn in 2015 when crude oil bench mark was $53 per barrel.”

The governor said since Buhari claimed that he had recovered and still recovering trillions of Naira looted from the treasury and over N3tn saved from the Treasury Single Account, he asked the President to fund the 2016 budget with the recovered fund.

Stressing that he was alerting Nigerians of the danger in the Federal Government’s plan to fund the 2016 budget with loan, the governor said, “Tomorrow, it will be said of me that I did not keep silent when Nigeria was being mortgaged to unnecessary debt.”

He warned that with the proposed N1.84tn borrowing, $2bn of which the President, according to him, is already going to borrow in China, the nation may soon be going the way of Greece because Nigeria will be borrowing N5bn per day for the next 365 days.

Fayose said, “If your income was N200, 000 per month last year and your expenditure was N195, 000 per month; does it make any economic sense for you to propose to spend N300, 000 per month this year that your income has reduced to N120, 000?

“Only President Buhari can explain to Nigerians what manner of Economic theory encourages borrowing of N1.84tn to fund a N6tn budget. As for me, it is nothing but a voodoo economic theory and Nigerians must take note that the income that should accrue to them in five years’ time is about to be spent in one year by the Buhari’s government.”