The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, has said Nigeria is a poor nation that has no option but to borrow money to fund infrastructure development.
Lawan stated this when he visited the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he met President Muhammadu Buhari behind closed doors on Thursday.
However, while answering questions from journalists, the Senate President assured that the legislature would “not be frivolous” in granting executive requests for loans.
He said such requests would be subjected to serious scrutiny by the parliament before approval, to ensure the use of the loan is monitored through an oversight arrangement.
Lawan said, “We also have the loan request from Mr. President. The request is to fund the 2021 Appropriation Act and, of course, this is not a new request. It’s something that we had passed in the MTEF and it’s something that when we passed the 2021 budget, we also passed that.
“So, it’s only to give the necessary legislative approval for the administration to go further and collect the funds.”
He further stated that, “Whenever we have to approve any loan, we have to insist on the details of what projects will be funded by those loans. We’ll have to look at the conditions that are attached to the loans. They must be favorable conditions before we approve and we will be up to date with our oversight, to ensure that what we have approved is directly deployed and on those projects that we have also approved for implementation.”