A former Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Justice Mustapha Akanbi (retd), has cautioned the federal government against borrowing more money.
He stressed that Nigeria’s rising debt burden may cause the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (ERGP) of the Government to become counter-productive.
He urged the government to rather be more innovative in revenue generation and more prudent in the management of the nation’s resources.
Akanbi said this yesterday on the sidelines of a summit organized by the Home and Street Kids Welfare Initiative in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
According to the ex-ICPC boss, who is also a retired Chairman of the Court of Appeal, the Federal Government must stop borrowing, but rather utilise the recovered loot to finance national expenditure and innovate new revenue generation strategies instead of borrowing more.
He said, “From my childhood, I have maintained that ‘he who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.’ I do not believe in borrowing. I believe that, however, difficult the time is, the government must work hard to find resources to build a nation.
“So personally, I do not support the idea of borrowing, because we borrowed money some years ago and we had to beg for debt forgiveness, and we had it.”
This is as the Executive Director, HSKI, Miss Funmi Omisope, said it was imperative to assist Nigerians to become job and wealth creators, adding that the non-governmental organisation had the vision to turn craving hands to creative minds, provide quality education, health care and skill training for street kids.
The Debt Management Office had said that Nigeria currently owed foreign and local creditors N19.16tn and that the nation spent $127.93m to service foreign debts and N474.06bn to service domestic debts in the first quarter of this year.
Also, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo had written to the two chambers of the National Assembly requesting them to separate the $1.49bn meant for projects in 10 states from the 2016-2018 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan of the Federal Government.
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