The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has backed the borrowings being done by the Buhari-led administration.
Speaking at a town hall meeting in Maiduguri, Borno state today September 23, the Minister said the Buhari administration is not borrowing for recurrent expenditure or to pay salaries, but it is rather using the loans to build world-class infrastructure that will benefit generations of Nigerians.
According to Mohammed, the Buhari administration has a lot to show for the loans taken, including the standard-gauge rail lines between Lagos and Ibadan as well as Abuja and Kaduna which he said are running well.
“Today, we have new airport terminals in Abuja, Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt, the Itakpe-Warri rail line that was abandoned for decades is running. We have well over 13,000km of federal roads under repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction and there is a road project in every state,
Today, we have started the countdown to when the 2nd Niger Bridge, which successive administrations have built only on paper, will be completed. The list of projects we are handling with the loans we obtained is long’’ he said
The minister said it is an irony that those criticizing the Buhari administration performed abysmally in terms of modernizing the nation’s infrastructure when they served at a time earnings were multiples of what they currently are. He stressed that if the previous administration had embarked on the kind of infrastructure development the Buhari government is engaged in, there would have been no reason to borrow.
“For example, in their time, they claimed to have spent billions of Naira in building infrastructure, but as one can see, their infrastructure projects were only on paper. Today, we are still saddled with looking for resources to build the same infrastructure for which they claimed to have allocated huge resources.
We will not be deterred by the antics of those who believe they can play politics with everything.’’he said
