Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a civil society organisation, has called on the National Assembly not to approve the latest loan request by President Bola Tinubu without calling for a public hearing.
CSJ, in a position paper signed by its Lead Director, Barr. Eze Onyekpere, made available to the media, said this has become necessary given the fact that the request from the President was in breach of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA).
The group said the FRA provided that government at all tiers shall only borrow for capital expenditure and human development, provided that such borrowing shall be on concessional terms with low interest rates and with a reasonably long amortisation period subject to the approval of the appropriate legislative body where necessary.
In addition to that, the law also provides that any government in the federation or its agencies and corporations desirous of borrowing shall, specify the purpose for which the borrowing is intended and present a cost-benefit analysis, detailing the economic and social benefits of the purpose to which the intended borrowing is to be applied.
The CSJ said: “The specific listing of projects to be financed by the loan have not been presented to Nigerians and therefore not in the public domain.
“Flowing from the first challenge, no cost-benefit analysis of the projects for which borrowing is sought has been presented to Nigerians. Cost-benefit analysis enables informed discourse and review of the propriety of the projects on which the proceeds of the loan will be invested.”
It said S.48 (1) of FRA requires that all the relevant information and facts related to this request for loan approval should be fully and timely disclosed by the executive to Nigerians before any approval is sought or granted by the National Assembly.
“The required information is not available in hard copy or any electronic portal of the executive or the legislature,” CSJ said.
It said considering Nigeria’s bloated public debt, which according to the Debt Management Office stood at N144.665 trillion as of December 31, 2024, and the very high percentage of retained revenue set aside for debt service over the years, borrowing without public input is a violent disregard to due process and extant law.
It demanded that the list and schedule of all projects for which the loans are sought, their intended locations and the cost-benefit analysis of specific projects should be published in hard and soft copies and made available to every Nigerian who intends to make an input into the borrowing process.
“The National Assembly cannot proceed to take such a monumental decision in further approving the bloating of the national debt to over N180 trillion without the input of Nigerians obtained through a public hearing.
“The loan approval process should not be rushed as demanded by the President and accepted by the leadership of the National Assembly who asked the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts to review and report back in two weeks. The review should hear and consider the input of a broad spectrum of Nigerians before approval or rejection. Approval should not be on a blanket basis but on a project-by-project consideration.”