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How Tinubu borrowed $9.5billion for frivolous, unexplained projects – Ndume
Muhammed Ali Ndume, Senator representing Borno South at the National Assembly, has once again carpeted President Bola Tinubu’s administration, this time, questioning the relevance of the projects for which a whopping $9.5billion borrowed from foreign lenders had been sunk.
All but dismissing the profile of the borrowings as frivolous, the fiery lawmaker, whose previous attacks on the President’s policies earned him a backlash from the All Progressives Congress (APC), which stripped him of his Chief Whip of the Senate position in 2024, returned to make mockery of the penchant of Tinubu to go for all manner of funny loans.
To him, the issue was not about borrowing but the purpose of the loans and their impact to the country now and in future, especially when generations unborn would be required to pay back, adding that he would even encourage the President to borrow more if the proceeds were plunged into tangible projects that would uplift and sustain the Nigerian economy.
Hear him: “Let me say first of all that I’m not against borrowing. Even the greatest countries in the world – America, Japan, China – all are big borrowers. But they borrow for physical, tangible and countable projects that you spread and pay over time. But my worry is not even in the borrowing, it’s what you borrow for. Let me give you quickly a rundown of what I’m talking.
“You see, in June, 2023, $500million was borrowed for women programme to scale up MPWPS. Can you see that? Can Nigerians see it? Where are the women?
“Then, on June 23rd, the same day, $800million was borrowed to cushion the impact of high petrol prices after fuel subsidy removal. How? Where? Then on September 23rd, 2023 under the same government, $700million was borrowed again for Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment.
“Then in December, 23rd $750million was borrowed through what they called Renewable Energy Scale-up. On June 24, 2024, $1.5billion was borrowed to support Nigerian Reform for Economic Stabilisation to Enable Transformation. Then on June 24th, $750million was borrowed for Immediate Financial and Technical Support for Efforts to Stabilise the Economy and to Scale-up Support for the Poor and Most Economically.
“Where are the poor people? Look, whenever you’re doing something, if it is true, somebody will come out to say thank you. What passes through the Senate – these are itemized. You don’t pass the bulk, you pass the itemised.
“These itemised borrowings were not passed. Not to my knowledge, because the Medium Term Expenditure Framework is something they bring and we look at it and maybe approve it. These things are bypassed. Before you pass the budget annually, there is the Mid-Term Expenditure Framework that must come to the National Assembly for approval.
“These are the things the government is anticipating to do. But that is not to say that even if it is approved it is a blanket approval. No. Every item must be accounted for. Because you need to ask questions, how are you going to do that? How is it important. Where is the money? What are the terms? All these things are supposed to be discussed first before you engage in it.
“That is the National Assembly approval. But as I said, when you total these borrowings, the figure I get is about $9.45billion, which amounts to about N13trillion. And as I said, I mentioned most of them. These are items that either intangible or have nothing to do with infrastructure. I would have supported for example, that the country is borrowing even more than that to build our infrastructures – to build railways.
“These things are not tangible things that you can hold on to and these are things that you pay back in the next 40-50 years. That time, we’re gone. Am I going to tell my child or grandchild that we borrowed $700million an we’re paying in 20-30 years for Adolescent Girls Initiative? Nigeria fortunately, has enough human capital that we need to tap into. We have the human assets.
“I’m acting in my best principles as a Senator and a member of the APC. I’m a Bonafide member of the APC – in fact, one of those that signed as a Senator unto the initial formation of the APC. I’ve been there. Nigeria is my country. As I said, I don’t have any other country.
“I hear them talking about 2027 all the time. But for me, I’m talking about today. I’m 65. I thank God for my life. All these people shouting about 2027 they don’t believe in God, because 2027 two years ahead and you don’t know if Ndume is going to be alive then or even the President. They’re busy shouting about 2027. We’ve just finished with the mandate. We’re just two years. In fact until next month, the President is just two years old and you’re talking about 2027.
“By the time the President is performing very well and Nigerians are happy, nobody will start talking about competing with Mr. President. It will be automatic. But as it is now, they keep on talking nonsense, as far as I’m concerned. Because, three things will determine whether this government is going to succeed or nor. One, security, two, welfare of the citizens and three that is related to the welfare is the economy itself. If it is not performing, then you can go and be talking nonsense, you cannot work.
“I’m Muhammed Ali Ndume. God created me differently and I’m going to account for my actions. If everything is to go the way I want, there would have been only one person in the Senate and that’s me. But that is not. So, we have 109 of us different senatorial districts, different makeup – God created us differently. God did not create two persons at a time.
“So, I cannot speak for them. And I cannot say my colleagues – but let me tell you, I have the support of my people, including my colleagues. The only difference is that they can’t come out and take the bullet the way I do. They’re always thinking that something will come.”
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
“Now that the court has ruled against it, we are sure that, in the coming days, we will witness a mass exodus from the ruling party,” were the words with which the African Democratic Congress (ADC) welcomed Wednesday’s ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja reversing the deadline for party primaries, among others.
Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesman, who conveyed the party’s excitement over the development, said it viewed the ruling as vindication of its objections to key aspects of the electoral body’s guidelines at the time they were issued.
Recalling its specific objections to the strict timelines on membership registration as well as the conduct of party primaries, the statement, said: “The decision of the court on these issues, including those that directly contradict the constitution, is therefore a welcome vindication of our position.”
Stressing that the ruling, which removed the impediment placed by the guidelines on politicians who wished to seek alternative platforms to contest elections, was a positive development that would promote freedom of association, the statement, added: “We believed at the time that that particular restriction was designed to prevent people from leaving the ruling party, APC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, “No, not at all.”
Rubio, a Cuban American and vociferous opponent of Havana’s government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometres) from the US shore as a “failed state” as it suffers a major economic crisis.
“Their economic system doesn’t work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place. What they’ve gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We’re very serious. We’re very focused. The US preference is always a diplomatic solution, but President Donald Trump has other options at his disposal.”
Stating that Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million in aid in return for reforms, he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba’s terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed conglomerate GAESA, which dominates the island’s economy.
Rubio said Thursday that the GAESA chief’s Florida-based sister, Adys Lastres Morera, had been arrested and was being held by US immigration authorities, adding in an X post: “Managing real estate assets…while also aiding Havana’s communist regime, until I terminated her permanent resident status.”
The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.
Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the “despicable” indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday at 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
“This isn’t really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure,” Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told AFP in Havana.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
“The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.
Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.
Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump’s steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington “should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn.”
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We believe that under no circumstances should such methods — which border on violence — be used against either former or current heads of state.
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