President Muhammadu Buhari’s hope of getting the approval of the House of Assembly for the $22.79bn loan request has been put on hold as the lower chamber postponed deliberations on the loan indefinitely.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, had said that President Buhari’s loan request would be considered on Wednesday, but yesterday, he directed that the consideration be suspended as it would not be on the order of proceedings.
The postponement is until further notice as Gbajabiamila did not give a date to deliberate on the loan request.
We will step that down for today,” he said, as the House had listed the report by its Committee on Aids, Loans and Debt Management on the 2016–2018 Federal Government External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan as the last item for consideration.
Recall that the Senate had also disagreed over the approval after Senator Adamu Aliero (Kebbi Central) pushed for a postponement of the consideration to another legislative day, but the Senate President did not agree with that.
He explained that such a postponement would be counterproductive as the findings and recommendations of the report would have already been debated in the media before the consideration. He advised that the report be considered to forestall such eventuality.
