APC hails Fashola transparency on Lagos debt

Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has hailed Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) on his explanation about the status of the state’s debt profile.

It also called on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led Federal Government to furnish Nigerians with an account of the status and performance of the financial liabilities it has piled up.

State Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, in a statement Sunday night, said every Nigerian should be grateful to Fashola and the APC administration in Lagos for utilising the state’s resources to better the lives of the people, noting that while the state was alive to its responsibilities, the Federal Government has abandoned its own.

The party urged Nigerians to demand from their leaders at the federal level what it did with the hefty debt it has accumulated in recent times.
The statement reads: “We salute Governor Fashola for this brilliant answer to what was obviously a blackmail from the PDP-led Federal Government that has been pilling debts for Nigerians at an alarming rate.
“Even with the huge accruals the Federal Government is harnessing, it has once again, ran Nigeria into a tricky debt trap after the controversial exit from the debt trap during the Obasanjo regime.
“It must interest Nigerians while the publication was making an issue that a viable state like Lagos is owing N160 billion, it wanted to play down the fact that the Federal Government it works for has piled up Nigeria’s debt to N8.8 trillion!

“Lagos has the fifth largest economy in Africa, catering for over 21 million people with such gigantic projects like the famous light rail project, the several independent power projects, the Eko Atlantic City, ambitious city roads, gigantic municipal water works, etc.
“Lagos has a reputation as a solid state that has met all its previous debt obligations. Lagos invests in regenerative projects that have contributed to not only make Lagos productive and viable to all Nigerians, but the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.”

The party wondered how an agency of the Federal Government that has nothing to show for the huge tranche of resources it sits on wants to play politics with the debt profile of Lagos State, “if not for the same arcane politics that the same government has used to wreck the country.”
“It may interest Nigerians to know that the Federal Government, which collects 52 per cent of monthly allocations while all the 36 states, including Lagos share 26 per cent, has a debt portfolio that far exceeds the debts owed by all the states in Nigeria.
“We want to also let Nigerians know that the same Federal Government is supervising the ruination of the infrastructural base of the nation, pushing Nigerians to flock to Lagos for survival and succour.

“We want to challenge the Federal Government to do a detailed explanation of what it does with the huge debt it had piled up for Nigerians, we want them to let Nigerians know what it does with the hefty 52 per cent it collects from the Federation Account each month while poverty, unemployment, infrastructural decay, insecurity, etc have all taken over the country.

“What is the Federal Government doing with the debt it continues pilling each day? Lagos is doing fantastic developmental and regenerative works with the mere N160 billion debt it had accumulated. It is up to date in its debt settlement profile as the projects it had invested in are high yielding projects that drive not only the economy of Lagos but that of Nigeria.
“So, we challenge the Federal Government to come out in equal clarity, as deployed by Governor Fashola to tell Nigerians what they are doing with the huge N8.8 trillion debt it has piled up for Nigeria.”