By Adadainfo
The leadership of the Eastern Union, a pressure group, has condemned the recent approval of 22.7 trillion naira extra-budgetary spending for the president by the National Assembly.
The EU described the intention behind the loan and its hasty approval by the National Assembly ‘as a monumental fraud and conspiracy orchestrated towards mortgaging the future of Nigerians’.
Prince MacDonald Enwere, EU’s national publicity secretary, disclosed this in a release on Tuesday.
Enwere stated that, “Nigerians are indeed alarmed and particularly dismayed on the conspiratorial alliance between the Presidency and the National Assembly to continue to suffocate and gag the future of the citizens of the country.
“The National Assembly has once again confirmed to Nigerians on the general notion that they are just a rubber-stamp loan approving legislature. We condemn in its entirety the homogeneous borrowing spree of the President Buhari-led administration and its attendant implications on the nation’s economy.
“This is an administration which has subjected Nigerians on the threshold of economic constipation and systematic policy summersault and has failed to set up or initiate any standard fiscal policy geared towards building a sustainable economy.
“It is indeed shocking and completely unacceptable for an administration with about two weeks to go to request a whopping sum of 22.7 trillion naira extra-budgetary spending. It is worthy to note that since President Buhari assumed office in 2015, there has been a sustained culture of unjustified borrowings, leading to a steep rise in the nation’s debt profile from 17.5 trillion in 2016 to 68.95 trillion naira presently.
“It has become more alarming that the nation’s public debt profile may hit 80 trillion before the end of this year.
“Considering the huge devastations and economic crunch brought upon Nigerians by this present government, we cannot afford to bear the undeserving burden of this incompetent administration or continue to dwel on a state of hopelessness and deceit.”
EU called on all Nigerians to rise and resist any attempt by the president and the National Assembly to further ‘plug the country into an economic dungeon through more reckless borrowing’.
