President Buhari’s $22.7 bn Loan approved by Senate_Ada Nkong

The Senate Wednesday approved President Muhammadu Buhari’s request for a $22,798,446,773.00 external loan .
Newsannexonline recalls that Buhari had requested for the loan to fund critical infrastructure projects under the 2016 – 2018 External Borrowing Plan.

The process of approving the loan by Senators however met vehement disagreements .

Despite fforts by Senator Adamu Aliero (Kebbi Central) to postpone the consideration of the report to another legislative day, the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, said such a postponement would be counterproductive as the findings and recommendations of the report would have already been debated in the media before the consideration.

Following a disagreement on if to subject the various components of the loan to voting, especially given the amounts and the lending countries between Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe and Senator Lawan, Abaribe said: “We are going to pass a loan of $22.7billion for which we are being denied the privilege to express our reservations. You are putting us in a very impossible position.

“There are some aspect of this loan that we object to. I want to ask on behalf of our colleagues here that we take these items one by one and vote on them.”

Responding, Lawan said: “You (Minority Leader) have not been denied of your privilege.

“I don’t want the discussion on this loan to degenerate into partisanship. My action was was not an attempt to muscle you.”

“I want to quote one popular saying that he who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing,” Abaribe replied.

Senator Gabriel Suswam also had some objections and information on an aspect of the loan that relates to power projects in the report which he did not want to raise in the open chamber.

He urged the Senate President to allow the Senate to go into an executive session for 10 minutes to resolve the issues.

“There are contentious issues in this report. I want to appeal that we go into an executive session for 10 minutes after that we can conclude proceedings on this report,” Suswam said.

Even though Lawan earlier kicked against the suggestion for the Senate to go into an executive session, he later accepted it following apparent interventions by Senators.

The Senate after the closed door session, which lasted for about 30 minutes, approved the two recommendations in the report.