Nigeria plans to borrow up to $5 billion from multiple sources, including the Eurobond market, to plug its deficit as it tries to overcome its worst economic crisis in years through a record budget, its Finance minister said .
wrote Ms Adeosun, who became Finance minister in November.
She said the government was “optimistic” that it would “receive the desired support” after cutting government costs and improving revenue collection.
Last month President Muhammadu Buhari presented a 2016 budget which states that total spending will be 6.08 trillion naira ($30.6 billion) and includes a tripling of capital expenditure to improve rail, road and power networks.
An amended version of the budget has since been submitted, although none of the estimates have changed. Ms Adeosun said the government was committed to its plans and would not reduce its infrastructure investments, adding that although the budget was based on an oil price of $38 per barrel there was enough flexibility for prices to be lower.
The Eurobond news comes as concerns arise over the country’s anti-corruption drive. Several high-profile Nigerians are facing charges as part of a drive against corruption but critics argue that it is aimed at settling old political scores and flouting due process.
President Buhari has vowed to recoup what he said were “mind-boggling” sums of public money stolen under previous administrations to fulfil a campaign pledge to end graft.
This week, the government claimed just 55 people stole more than $6 billion between 2006 and 2013, leaving Nigeria in the lurch as its economy struggles due to the global oil price slump.
But it is former national security advisor Sambo Dasuki who has become the key figure in the anti-corruption campaign. The former army colonel is accused of looting billions of dollars that were aimed at buying weapons and equipment for troops fighting Boko Haram Islamists.
Cash is alleged to have been diverted instead to members of former president Goodluck Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to fund his failed re-election campaign. Dasuki was granted bail last month but has been kept in custody without access to his legal counsel as he awaits the start of three trials, his lawyer Joseph Daudu told a court in Abuja on Wednesday. Dauda said the detention was a “brazen affront” to the Judiciary and the judge agreed.
“I don’t see how I can be conducting a criminal trial without the presence of the accused person,” said judge Adeniyi Ademola. “You can set a dangerous precedent as it is.”
Dauda later claimed Mr Buhari was reverting to his old autocratic habits from his days as military ruler in the 1980s.
“He (Buhari) emphasised he was a changed man, open to democratic principals. But interfering with the court system, trying to find your own rule of law, is not good,” he told AFP at his office.
“It makes the outcome suspect.” Prosecutor Oladipo Okpeseyi, however, denied any impropriety. “The federal government has obeyed every order made in respect of this case. We are not acting illegally in any way whatsoever,” he said.
But Buhari’s own comments about Dasuki and two other cases involving the pro-Biafra activist Nnamdi Kanu and the Shiite Muslim leader Ibrahim Zakzaky have rung alarm bells.
He told reporters in December the men should be kept in custody because they had committed “atrocities” against the government — despite none of them having been tried and convicted.
-AFP
