By Ochereome Nnanna
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to borrow $30 billion foreign loan has been unveiled, and will soon be tabled before the National Assembly for approval. If his intention sails through, it will be the single largest loan tranche in the history of Nigeria.

Politically, it will mean that barely eleven years after the President Olusegun Obasanjo-led People’s Democratic Party,PDP, Federal Government leveraged on the connections of its Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to negotiate a 12 billion buyback deal to exit Nigeria from the Paris Club $30 billion debt burden, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress, APC, Federal Government will be taking Nigeria back to that “Egypt”.

PDP, which is now the main opposition party, has (understandably) risen in vehement opposition to this borrowing plan which it sees as a reversal of one of its milestone achievements during its sixteen years in power which the APC Federal Government likes to describe maliciously as a period of “rot”.

By the time this new debt is added to our existing internal and external debts we may be in the hole for about $60 billion. This is why the PDP shout of “wolf!”, “wolf!!” at this gargantuan borrowing plan is not the mere “wailings” of a disgruntled opposition party.

But PDP should go beyond the usual opposition reflex of kicking against this risk-laden venture (though the APC would have done the same if it was still in the opposition). It should proffer a better plan towards getting Nigeria out of the suffering that this crushing recession has imposed on the government and the people. That is what credible and intelligent opposition is all about. If you are saying “no” to a policy, show us a superior alternative.

The APC Federal Government has made it clear that it intends to borrow and spend Nigeria out of the recession. On its surface, that is not a bad idea. It is either we continue to pray and hope that oil prices will bounce back or we do something dramatic to launch out of the hole – and pay the price later.

I support this borrowing idea, subject to terms and conditions which I will discuss shortly. I do not think we can successfully diversify the economy based on the pittance we are receiving from oil sales, taxes and Customs revenues alone.

Diversification requires massive investments in power, infrastructure, agriculture, housing and other revenue-yielding sectors from which we can repay our loans.

Therefore, my number one condition for supporting the loan is that it must be strictly devoted to sectors that will boost economic activities, productivity and prosperity.

Beyond ensuring that the loan is bankably invested, the projects must also be EQUITABLY DISTRIBUTED. In other words, it must be deployed in such a way that every section of the country will benefit without some sections feeling cheated.

The principle of the Federal Character and even distribution of the commonwealth of Nigeria, which Buhari has so far jettisoned in favour of “those who voted for him” (the so-called “97%/5%”) must not be allowed here.

The reason for this is simple and germane. We are all going to bear the burden equally. It is going to affect the present and future generations of Nigeria equally without minding which section of the country they come from. We are all going to pay the price equally. Therefore, we must all enjoy the benefits equally.

I am harping on this because of the naked nepotism that this administration has demonstrated without caring about the outcries it has generated since its seventeen months in power. Buhari has shown he has his own sense of what is due to the various sections of Nigeria which has no bearing whatever with the Federal Character formula espoused in our Constitution. If we leave it to him alone, he will repeat the inequitable distribution pattern he employed when he was the Executive Chairman of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, whereby most of the intervention projects were sited in the deep North.

Already, the outlines of his pattern of spending the proposed loan show he is going to exclude the South East almost completely if newspaper reports are anything to go by. For instance, none of the nearly eight billion Dollar railway projects listed for execution with the loan will run through an inch of the South East. There is a Lagos-Ibadan double track ($1.3b) and a Kano-Kaduna segment ($1.1b) which together form the Lagos – Kano Western line. Nothing is said about the Port Harcourt – Enugu – Makurdi – Jos – Maiduguri – Nguru line which forms the Eastern flank of the Nigerian rail system.

Instead, we see what they call the Calabar – Port Harcourt – Onne Deep Seaport “coastal” rail line ($3.5b) and another Abuja Mass Rail Transit ($1.6b), which will be added to the one already built by the Goodluck Jonathan regime in the FCT.. A proper rail network that will cover the whole country equitably and make every Nigerian happy to bear the $30 billion debt burden should run as follows: (a) Port Harcourt – Enugu – Jos – Nguru in the East; (b) Lagos – Ibadan – Minna – Kaduna – Kano with branch-offs to Sokoto and Zamfara; (c) and the Lagos – Ore – Benin – Asaba/Onitsha – Aba – Uyo – Calabar South Central line. This line should branch off at Agbor to connect with the existing Warri – Ajaokuta abandoned standard gauge, which should be extended to Abuja and link up with the recently commissioned standard gauge to Kaduna.

That way, all the geopolitical zones of the country will be linked by rail, thus enhancing national unity. It will not be restricted only to the North and West where Buhari won election and the South-South, which the APC Federal Government wants to capture by all means.

If Buhari’s unconfirmed railway network is implemented, the South East will be left in the cold. This factor of marginalisation in the distribution of federal projects was chiefly responsible for the South Easterners having no choice but to migrate to other parts of the country in search of opportunities.

The rails must not only be evenly distributed, they must also run through cities with large enough populations to enable us pay back the debt in record time. Putting the rails through uninhabited “coastal” areas shows this administration is not serious about implementing that aspect of the project. It will merely be used to woo the support of the people of those swampy terrains and later abandoned due to the unsustainably huge costs and the un-bankability factor. Modernise their waterways instead.

When this loan proposal reaches the National Assembly, our lawmakers must take bold steps to correct the flaws of sectional favouritism and marginalisation inherent in the Buhari vision of developing Nigeria. They must ensure that every section is taken along. It is our collective burden, and therefore, it must be for our collective benefit. Otherwise, forget it.

Our British colonial masters designed our existing railway network 115 years ago to unite the North with the South and allow the landlocked North to benefit from the sea gateways of the South. It helped to boost commerce and bring peoples from across the country together to share common values. Our rail system of the 21st century and beyond must follow the same pattern and even improve on it, rather than being used continue the post-civil war policy of excluding the Igbo people from the commonwealth of Nigeria because of their constitutionally-guaranteed political choices.

It is incumbent on federal legislators from the South East and all patriotic federal parliamentarians to ensure that the benefits of the borrowing are evenly distributed. It is either we do this or we dump the deal.
The loan will be our collective burden. It must be for our collective benefit.