The Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debt, Sen. Shehu Sani (APC-Kaduna Central) has said the Kaduna Government’s request for a $350m loan was rejected due to the state’s high debt profile.
Sani said that the senators from the state supported the rejection of the request. According to him, approving the loan for a state with a high debt profile will put a lot of burden on future generations of the state.
The Senate had on March 29, rejected the World Bank loan sought by the Kaduna State Government for developmental projects. Shehu Sani vowed not to be part of any move that would jeopardise the lives of unborn children in the state.
He said: "We rejected the loan to save the children of Kaduna state from the slavery of debt that will overtake them in the future.“Most political elite leave behind for their children, hotels, houses, mansions and estates, but they leave mountains of debts for the children of the poor.
"I do not see the reason why state governors cannot use the Paris Refund, the bailout funds and Excess Crude Account distributions to execute their projects and programmes. Why must they go for loans?
"If the loan is even reasonable, you will look at it from that point of view. The tenure of a government is at most eight years and you leave behind 20, 30, 40 years of loan for people to pay.”
He said that as chairman of the committee on loans, he owed it a duty to the state and all other states to ensure that states that were in debt did not acquire more debts.
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