President Muhammadu Buhari has asked the Senate to approve a fresh loan request of U.S. $800 million from the World Bank.

Development Diaries reports that the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, read Buhari’s request to lawmakers on the floor of the Senate.

The government said the World Bank facility is aimed at providing succour to the poorest of the poor upon removal of the petrol subsidy that is slated to come into force two days after Buhari’s exit.

The request came as the Director General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, criticised the continuous accumulation of public debt, saying the lean revenue does not support the move.

‘We now have very limited borrowing space, not because our debt to GDP is high, but because our revenue is too small to sustain the size of our debt. That explains our high debt service ratio’, Akabueze, speaking at the ongoing induction programme for elected lawmakers, said.

‘Once a country’s debt service ratio exceeds 30 percent, that country is in trouble and we are pushing towards 100 percent. That tells you how much trouble we are in.

‘We have limited space to borrow. When you take how much you can generate in terms of revenue and what you can reasonably borrow, that establishes the size of the budget.

‘The next thing would be to pay attention to government priority regarding what project gets what. The budget is not a shopping list. In the past, the budget only contained expenditure, but we have changed that’.

For an administration that has less than 20 days to leave office, seeking a loan for palliative is questionable.

Development Diaries believes that the next administration ought to decide on the loan.

We, therefore, call on the Senate to reject Buhari’s loan request to allow the incoming Bola Tinubu-led government to make decision on fuel subsidy removal.

Photo source: Muhammadu Buhari