The Human Rights Writers Association, HURIWA, has described as vexatiously unconstitutional the decisuon of the Ahmed Lawan-led Senate to approve President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to borrow $22.7 billion despite objection from some Senators.
The rights group believes that the collection of the foreign loans, which would be re-looted by government officials, offends several provisions of the Nigerian constitution including sections 16(1); (2) of the Nigerian constitution.
HURIWA noted that the section of the constitution opposes excessive borrowings that makes Nigeria a slave of external jurusdictions and impedes our national drive for self reliance.
Specifically, section 16-(1) provides thus: “The State shall, within the context of the ideals and objectives for which provisions are made in this Constitution.
“(a) harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity and an efficient, a dynamic and self-reliant economy.
“(b) control the national economy in such manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen on the basis of social justice and equality of status and opportunity.
(c) without prejudice to its right to operate or participate in areas of the economy, other than the major sectors of the economy, manage and operate the major sectors of the economy.
(d) without prejudice to the right of any person to participate in areas of the economy within the major sector of the economy, protect the right of every citizen to engange in any economic actitivies outside the major sectors of the economy.
“(2) The State shall direct its policy towards ensuring:
(a) the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development;
“(b) that the material resources of the nation are harnessed and distributed as best as possible to serve the common good.
“(c) that the economic system is not operated in such a manner as to permit the concentration of wealth or the means of production and exchange in the hands of few individuals or of a group.
“(d) that suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, reasonable national minimum living wage, old age care and pensions, and unemployment, sick benefits and welfare of the disabled are provided for all citizens.”
HURIWA submitted that the constant flying around cap in hand by President Buhari to borrow from all conceivable creditors from all around the world was tantamount to converting Nigeria to a beggarly economy which is against these constitutional provisions.
The group stated this in a media Statement signed by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf and made available to newsmen on Thursday.
It added, “We all know that when Nigeria had an activist National Assembly headed by Senator Bukola Saraki, this move by President Muhammadu Buhari to mortgage Nigeria into the enslavement of the Chinese creditor was rejected.
“Then in 2019 the President who worked tirelessly to ddestabilize the then National Assembly using primitive force of arm had sent the loan request to the senate but was rejected by the Upper Legislative Chamber under the leadership of Bukola Saraki.
“However, we have been informed now that during today’s plenary, being 5th March 2020, despite the fact that the Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe cautioned against considering all recommendations on the loan request at once, the lame duck and rubber stamped Senate under the rudderless headship of Ahmed Lawan accepted hook-line and sinker this toxic loan request by the President which will effectively return Nigeria to the in glorious infamy of belonging to the notoriously disreputable class of heavily indebted nation which we had exited during the President Olusegun Obasanjo era through the interventions of the globally trusted and tested World’s renowned technocrat Dr Mrs Ngozi Okonjo Iweala who as Finance minister got the London and Paris clubs of creditors to write off Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion USD accumulated loans for the payment of a one-off $15billion USD.
“Now the current administration has brought us right back to the status of a heavily indebted nation and worst still these huge funds would be siphoned like all the revenues generated by Customs, Federal Inland Revenue Services and from the exports of crude oil to the international market ”
HURIWA applauded Senator Abaribe who stated that the Senate should consider the recommendations ‘item by item’, but his suggestion was dismissed by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan even as the intensed disagreement, made the senate to go into an executive session where it was agreed that the loan be approved.
“Nigeria has from this moment become a slave except HURIWA and all other concerned Nigerians can use the courts of law to try to save Nigeria from the imminent enslavement.
“We call on good spirited individuals to support this advocacy to use the court system to stop the government from proceeding to obtain these toxic loans,” it said.
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