2016 budget: Nigeria needs home grown not IMF solution – Agoro
By; Bayo Akamo, Ibadan.
National Chairman of the National Action Council, Dr Olakpade Agoro has said Nigeria need “Home Grown Syndicated Solution” rather than IMF loan loaded with conditionalities unfavorable to the peoples’ interest and welfare to tackle its financial challenges.
Dr Agoro who stated this in a statement made available to journalists in Ibadan, stressed that the country now need a better way out of its numerous challenges and not a foreign loan.
According to Dr Agoro, every Nigerian including the down trodden were happy during the regime of erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo when Nigeria paid off almost US$ 30 billion of her total indebtedness to exit the “back to slavery, chains and shackles in the hands and legs of the poor, IMF problematic loans”.
“It therefore becomes apposite that if the nation must sincerely and timely find an appropriate, most reasonable to peoples’ interest, friendly conscious approach to her prevailing economic quagmire is the Home Grown Syndicated Solution rather than IMF loan loaded with conditionality unfavorable to the peoples’ interest and welfare,” he said.
The NAC National President pointed out that it will be surprising to Nigerians that the President Muhammadu Buhari led government expected to “be the poor friendly to be heard contemplating a good boy of the West, IMF loan borrowing missioner”.
Dr Agoro maintained that it was unfortunate that the administration of former “President Olusegun Obsanajo before it left office in 2007 had Foreign Exchange Earnings of US$62 billion in the kitty” only for it to be allegedly unexplainably drawn down to US$450 million in just one year (2007 -2008) by the following regime of Yar’Adua/ Goodluck Jonathan”.
He added that “the facts are also here with us undisputable and undeniable that a handful of Nigerians are far richer than the nation State of Nigeria in foreign exchange savings pocketed in far away foreign economies,” and that, “should these Nigerians suddenly die like Mobutu Seseseko Kukungedu did who left behind a whooping foreign exchange account of about US$5 billion, there will be no way the West would ever allow that type of money to be taken out of the Western economy”.
“Interesting enough, the story we have often than expected being fed with, simply to make us look like fools laughing off our sorrow is the never ending tell tale discoveries of Sani Abacha loot to be repatriated back to Nigeria, but without anyone ever telling us how the money got saved in the foreign banks by the late General who never once traveled out of Nigeria throughout his stay in power to any country of the West”.
Dr Agoro noted that “since it becomes obvious that Nigeria judicial system is a snail speed moving one with trials inhibited with cogs in the wheel delays that could last at least last 20 years moving from first stage lower Court to Court of Appeal and finally the Supreme Court, we will all be fooling ourselves to expect any tangible results than mere noise making President Buhari’s current assault at the gangsters and evils of corruption in Nigeria”.
He maintained that “for assured maximum result guarantee, the best approach that can effortlessly and effectively recoup back to Nigeria within 40 days of minimum US $ 5 billion dollars should be the afro style “Home Grown syndicated Solutions of Name, Shame and Negotiate, take back all or part of the identifiable stolen funds”.
Emphasizing that even the four years tenure of President Buhari “can and shall not last the expected trial time of those now being made to face trials in court for corruption,” he declared that “Nigerians are birds of same feathers irrespective of the political parties we are in be it APC, PDP, APGA, SDP etc are clever thieves ready to pay any amount of money particularly in US dollars, pound sterling to engage our lawyers to keep our cases ad-infinitum in courts no doubt with the grand intention past the time Muhammadu Buhari the sworn anti- corruption crusader would ever legally stay in power”.
