$1bn loan: Nigeria to pay back in seven years

FEDERAL Government of Nigeria is expected to pay back the $1 billion loan to be collected for the purchase of security gadgets to combat Boko Haram in seven years. This was revealed on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday.

Chairman of the House committee on finance, Abdulmumin Jibrin, who made this revelation said during their interaction with various stakeholders on the matter, they discovered that the country would cough out about N30 billion annually for seven years to settle the debt.
Also President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday forwarded to the House of Representatives the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) for the period 2015 to 2017 heralding the presentation of the 2015 budget proposal.
Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal read the letter from the president conveying the message.
Jibrin further explained that the N30 billion to be paid annually would form part of Nigeria’s budget from 2015.
Expectedly, the country will pay the sum of N210 billion to repay the loan, out of which only about N165 billion is for the actual loan, while N45 billion will be for interest, based on current official rate.

The lawmaker however said that the committee on debts and loans and that of finance which are saddled with the responsibility of interfacing with stakeholders on the loan must ask some relevant questions on the issue.

He said the committees were trying to establish the portion of the military hardware that would go to each security agency among other issues.

The lawmaker added that some of the security agencies do not even know what they would get from the equipment to be procured, hence the need to do a thorough job before coming to the House.

He requested the House to give them two weeks to conclude work on the loan, but Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal directed them to present their report “latest by next Tuesday.