The Action Congress of Nigeria has decried the country's rising
external debt, saying it negates everything the federal Government told Nigerians when it paid $12 billion to get debt relief of $18 billion in 2005.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it is shocked and saddened to learn that less than seven years after the much-celebrated debt relief, which supposedly wiped the country's debt slate clean, Nigeria's external debt has risen to $5.9 billion and, when the domestic debt is added, a whopping $44 billion.
To service this debt in 2012 alone, it said, some N559.6 billion (more than the allocation to Education and power combined in the budget) has been earmarked, even at a time the economy is wallowing in an incredible paradox of achieving growth with engendering development.
"It is time to ask questions about the gains of the debt relief that Nigeria got in 2005. Where is the better life that the PDP-led Federal Government promised Nigerians after the debt relief?
"Where are the massive foreign investments promised? Where are the jobs that Nigerians were told will be created since the country would no longer need to spend billions of naira to service its debt?
"What did Nigeria gain from paying $12 billion that could have been used for, if nothing else, massive infrastructural development?"
The Punch