By Oduche Azih
SUN, 10 JULY, 2022-theGBJournal| This is what I took away from Kugelman’s presentation recently on Aljazeera: It is not profitable to seek to dwell on potential or real Chinese malevolence in its loan agreements with the typical client state like Sri Lanka.
The fault he said lies in a past of consistent bad and often senseless policies by Sri Lankan governments. How the country got into a bind in its loan agreements with China for ports development has to be a subject of future deep study.
However, it beggars belief that a cash strapped government of Sri Lanka could so cavalierly cut taxes. It is therefore not surprising that ultimately Sri Lanka couldn’t service its debt obligations.
Back to Nigeria. Leaving current problems aside, it is worthwhile investigating the degree of sanity behind the new democratically elected government of General Olusegun Obasanjo discontinuing the collection of road tolls on Federal Highways.
That was 1999 a time when the long-running debate over the crying need to discontinue the application of Fuel Subsidies was just beginning. Fast forward to today, the Fiscal chicken have come home to roost, haven’t they? Nigeria is now technically insolvent. All the posturing to the contrary are most unhelpful. We are told that over 90% of revenue from all sources goes towards Debt Service. Like in Sri Lanka this is clearly not sustainable. At which point major defaults would occur and national assets are foreclosed nobody knows.
This is because of unreliable figures from the National Bureau of Statistics and the deliberately opaque operations of the State Ministries of Finance, Petroleum Resources, the Internal Revenue Service, the Central Bank, the dual Offices of the Accountant-General of the Fededation and the Auditor-General of the Federation. I am personally scared at the prospect of a presidential jet being garnished on foreign soil while the President is out and about visiting.
Oduche Azih, Lagos
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