Tunde Bakare
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has justified consistent borrowing by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
He described it as “is a necessary burden” to help fund critical infrastructure across the country.
Lawan, told the media on Friday, June 11, in Abuja, that for the country to be adequately developed, the National Assembly was considering two loan requests of the Federal Government.
“Before us in the Senate are two requests from the executive arm of government; one is to construct and rehabilitate rail lines to the different parts of the country.
“The other one is to boost the economy directly; investments into agriculture as well as other real sectors of the economy including mining,” he said.
Lawan noted that the loan requests also included requests for loans guaranteed by the Federal Government for some states.
“This is because the N32 trillion you are talking about is not all Federal Government debts. Part of it belongs to the states, only that the Federal Government gives the guarantee.
“Yet, for us to develop the country we need to build infrastructure.
“What do we do to raise funds? There are several ways; we are going to raise taxes, can we afford that in the current situation to raise taxes for us to fund the building of our infrastructure?.
“So, what are the options? Definitely, that option is out (to raise taxes).
“In fact, what we have is not the kind of infrastructure that will boost our economy. So we can’t raise taxes, the option is to borrow and also to borrow responsibly,” Lawan stated.
The Senate President further explained that before the borrowing; the government had to likewise first identify those essential infrastructures that could grow the economy.
On Twitter ban, Lawan said “the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed had informed Nigerians that the government and managers of Twitter were finding ways to resolve the matter.
“That is what we heard. And our belief is that Nigeria needs Twitter; just as much as Twitter needs Nigeria.
“Our expectation is that with engagement between the Federal Government and Twitter; we will resolve the dispute between Twitter and our government,” he said.