Nigeria needs to learn that borrowing is not the way out...
LGs are borrowing, states are borrowing, FG is borrowing…
Borrowing from commercial banks, borrowing from Paris club,
borrowing from the World Bank, borrowing everywhere.
Borrowing to build roads, borrowing to drill boreholes,
borrowing to build schools, borrowing to steal.
Unfortunately, this yeye habit is going to be here for a
while. I remember when Simon Bako Lalong criticized the immediate past
administration for the debt it accumulated. I had to admit that he had a point.
“Finally the elephant in the room flees!” I thought. Here was someone one who
was willing to talk hard on all this borrowing. Fast forward a few weeks… the
story had changed. Shortly after being elected, Lalong mentioned that he was
willing to pay salaries even before being sworn in, provided the banks will
offer him loans. I was confused, I didn’t know if to join the civil servants in
celebrating the end of their plight [after all, the end justifies the means,
right?] or to worry deeply for the state’s economic future.
Unfortunately [or fortunately as radical Lalong apologetics
will say], the Plateau State situation is not an isolated case. In fact, OUR
debt case could pass as relatively decent. There are perhaps a number of
Governors whose signatures will first grace loan applications before any other
major documents [well that’s just an unnecessary hyperbole, lol]. And there is
no redemption, our government is made up of unrepentant borrowers.
It seems [to me at least] Nigerian government officials are
either very ignorant of the long-term consequences of borrowing or have weighed
the options and decided that the end justified the means. Or it could be that
they are so lazy to explore other relatively harder sources of funding such as
aggressive IGR and has resorted to the easiest way out. I hold the opinion that
it is time to put an end to this habit of excessive borrowing. The economic problem
the present government is facing is largely because of the reckless borrowing
of the administrations before it. Why then should this government make the job
of governance harder for the next government by collecting loans it cannot pay back?
I am scared for this country. Once you start borrowing to
keep basic functions of government afloat, it is a slippery slope. Look at Greece;
they kept rolling down the downward spiral, one loan at a time, all in a bid to
stay afloat. Time has flown, Greece has realized its mistake… but it’s too
late. I just pray that this doesn’t become the fate of our country.
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