SOUTH EAST REGION NOT INCLUDED IN BUHARI'S PLANS FOR DEVELOPMENT

The Buhari Administration has further confirmed the marginalization woes the South Eastern Region of Nigeria has suffered since it came into power as the region has been left out in projects which the President plans to execute with the pro­posed $29.960 billion infra­structure loan.

A breakdown of how the loan would be spent on infra­structure between 2016 and 2018 shows that none of the projects contained in the gov­ernment’s document is locat­ed in the South East geo-polit­ical zone.

President Buhari had on Tuesday asked the Senate to ap­prove the loan from multilater­al financial institutions to ena­ble his administration execute critical infrastructure and oth­er social intervention initiatives across the country.

The Finance Ministry said the $29.960 billion loan is de­signed to address infrastructure deficit in the country. But in a statement released to journalists on Thursday on the projects to be funded by the loan, there was no single infra­structural project allocated to the South East - an area most acutely hit by poor infrastruc­ture and an acute shortage of various social amenities.

According to the statement, issued by the Special Assistant to the Minister of Finance on Media, Mr. Festus Akanbi, in­frastructural projects are allo­cated $18.3 billion.
The projects to be em­barked upon are the Mambil­la Hydro Electric Power Project ($4.8 billion), the Moderni­sation Coastal Railway Pro­ject (Calabar-Port Harcourt-Onne Deep Sea Port Segment) valued at $3.5 billion and the Abuja Mass Transit Rail Project (Phase 2) put at $1.6 billion.Others are the Lagos-Kano Railway Modernisation Project (Lagos-Ibadan Segment Dou­ble Track) estimated at $1.3 bil­lion and the Lagos-Kano Rail­way Modernisation Project (Kano-Kaduna Segment Dou­ble Track) valued at $1.1 bil­lion.

The balance of $11 billion will be expended on Eurobond ($4.5 billion), Federal Govern­ment Budget Support ($3.5 bil­lion), Social Support for Educa­tion and Health ($2.2 billion), Agriculture ($1.2 billion), and Economic Management and Statistics ($.2 billion).
According to the statement, the borrowing has a three-year plan covering proposed pro­jects for 2016-2018 and is ex­pected to be phased over the three year period.
The ministry said that the borrowings are highly conces­sional (non-commercial), with low interest rates and long ten­ors.

The Federal Government affirmed that the funding is being sought from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), the Islamic De­velopment Bank (IDB), Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) and the China Exim Bank.

The planned Eurobond is­suance in the international capital markets, the statement pointed out, is the only com­mercial source of funding.

This is a good opportunity for the Senate to demonstrated the spirit of the much talked about ONE NIGERIA and demand that every part of the country should benefit in one way or the other from the proposed loan before given their consent.

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