Nigeria To Pay Back $1bn Loan In Seven Years

The Federal government of Nigeria is to pay back the $1 billion loan to be obtained for the purchase of security gadgets to combat Boko Haram insurgency in seven years.

This was revealed on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday.

Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman, House committee on finance, who made this revelation, said during their interaction with various stakeholders on the matter, that they discovered that the country would cough out about N30 billion annually for seven years to settle the debt.

Jibrin further explained that the N30 billion to be paid annually would form part of Nigeria’s budget from 2015.

Nigeria is expected to pay the sum of N210 billion to repay the loan, out of which only about N165 billion is for the actual loan, while N45 billion will be for interest, based on current official rate.

The lawmaker however said the committee on debts and loans and the committee on finance, which are saddled with the responsibility of interacting with stakeholders on the loan, must ask some relevant questions on the issue.

He said the committees were trying to ascertain the quota of the military hardware that would go to each security agency, adding that some of the security agencies have no knowledge of what equipment to be procured, hence the need for two weeks to conclude a thorough work on the loan before coming to the House is needed. But Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Speaker of the House, directed them to present their report “latest by next Tuesday.”