Kene Obiezu
SIR: With many controversial and contentious bills lying before the National Assembly, Nigerians are keeping an unblinking vigil, eager to see the road the National Assembly would travel. With the judiciary pounded on all sides by all manner of ridiculously bloated charges, the National Assembly‘s leaning would go a long way in providing the harbinger for what is to come between now and 2023 when the salubrious mechanics of democracy would see President Muhammadu Buhari’s resoundingly disappointing term of office screech to a shuddering halt.
So far, the signs are not good. The current National Assembly has all the makings and trappings of a rubberstamp legislature.
The news that a loan running into billions of dollars was recently approved for President Muhammadu Buhari by the National Assembly came as a hammer blow to a lot of Nigerians and for good reason. As corruption has consumed the country, laying waste to public resources and values, successive administrations at the state and federal level have worked feverishly to entangle Nigeria in a scandalous web of foreign debts. These debts which find all too willing givers in some international financial institutions of dubious disposition and design have mounted over the years milking the country of any hope of financial health.
The frightening debts would not have been such a concern had Nigerians seen tangible results of money received and well-spent. However, results are few and far between and worse still, no one is offering any remotely sensible explanation. This is no surprise given the historic failings of public accountability in the country and the sparkling ascent corruption has made in a short time as the ethos of national life.
It is monumental foolhardiness to expect a basket to hold water. Nigeria, as it is, has unfortunately and scandalously become an experimenter of this foolhardiness. When monies are borrowed and let loose in a system riddled with holes, there can only be one outcome and that is what Nigeria is experiencing at the moment.
Humongous amounts have been borrowed over many years with nothing to show but the sordid fact that the country remains in the debt chronicles of many foreign organizations. At the expense of the country, money is borrowed to enrich the corrupt.
No country can properly grow when it does not put in place proper mechanisms to curb waste, especially the waste of public resources. Every country that has achieved a commendable measure of national development and is working assiduously to maintain its standing knows that it must keep the management of its resources tight through the tools of accountability and transparency. Here in Nigeria and in most countries of Africa mired in stagnation and underdevelopment the story is unsurprisingly similar.
Outlandish foreign loans are sought to service equally outrageous projects. They are approved of course by a complacent and complicit legislature looking the other way. When received, a few white elephant projects are invested in to deceive the masses and divert attention while a bulk of the money ends up in private pockets.
It is one of the reasons that Nigeria and Africa continues to lurch in the darkness of underdevelopment and there will be no light blazing on the horizon unless those who entangle their countries in debts and cunningly and corruptly end up as the debt collectors are exposed and punished according to law.
- Kene Obiezu, Abuja.
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