Continuous borrowing is mortgaging future of our children – Senator Suswam

Gabriel-Suswam

By TOM CHIAHEMEN, Abuja –

Chairman of the Senate committee on power, Senator Gabriel Suswam, has expressed serious worry about the level of borrowing that Nigeria under the Buhari administration is engaged in.

 Speaking in an interview in his Abuja residence at the weekend, Senator Suswam, who is the immediate former Governor of Benue state, also opposed the idea of a state police, warning that its establishment would be a recipe for complete disintegration of the country.

He further blamed the epileptic electricity supply in the country to the fact that the unbundling of the power holding company of Nigeria (PHCN) was done in a haste, leaving a lot of challenges that have continued to confront the various stakeholders in the sector.

On the implication of the mounting foreign debts, Senator Suswam said, “as it stands, “we have about N33 trillion foreign debts because we are borrowing every year to fund the budget. We have a deficit in this year’s budget. Initially, the deficit was about N5 trillion, but with additional borrowing, next year’s budget deficit will be in the neighbourhood of about N8 trillion. So, how do you sustain that?”

“First, we have breached the Fiscal Responsibility Act which provides that 3% should be in the threshold. For last year, it was 4%. The same laws that we made, we breached them. Now, they are saying we should amend the Fiscal Responsibility Act to accommodate any kind of borrowing that we intend to do.

“What the deficit has done is that it has messed up the exchange rate; it has brought in double digit inflation, and the economy has become unmanageable. Both the macro and micro economic activities have completely broken down. So, continuous borrowing is mortgaging the future of our children.”

Senator Suswam warned: “without sounding like an opposition person, I want to say that, for any government to continue to borrow to fund the budget, we are completely heading towards disaster.

“They brought a supplementary budget of N900 billion and the deficit is about N842 billion. I have never seen a budget like that. That is a bad budget, and what that means is that it has added to the stock on the deficit.

“So, for 2022 budget, the deficit will be in the neighbourhood of N8 trillion, which means ab nicio that budget is not implementable. Even to implement this budget, most of the financing aspects are not realizable.

“So, for me, as an assembly that wants to cooperate with the Executive, so that we will not be seen as those that are stopping them from working, we have continued to approve requests from the Executive that requires us to allow them to borrow to finance infrastructure; whether these infrastructures are seen is another thing. But we will continue to approve it whether they are on ground or not.”

Justifying his opposition to State Police, Suswam explained that even as a sitting governor then, he opposed it “because I know that most of us don’t have the maturity to control state police.”

According to him, “the proposal in the constitution for amendment is that governors will appoint Commissioners of Police, and I can’t be party to that because I know the implication for that. That will be recipe for complete disintegration of country, except we want that.”

He said: “As a governor there is no way you will come to my state and misbehave and I won’t charge you for nuisance and put you in jail. And when it comes to election, you know that I can appoint a Commissioner of Police. My mother can be Commissioner of Police, my cousins will be the DPOs (Divisional Police Officers) here and there, and my lackeys can be in positions; so anywhere somebody is my opponent politically, that person is gone. So, we can’t practice state police.

“I give you an example of the local government electoral bodies. As a sitting governor, there was no way any other party could win, even a councillorship seat. So, what could be the difference between that and state police? Except if we are inviting anarchy. State police is something that nobody should even think of.

“Yes, people are saying that because of the level of insecurity in the country, they feel that if we have our own state police, we will be able to contend with that, but it will even be worse. The consequence of that will be worse than what we are trying to solve.

“I think, however, that we need to sit down and think properly what we need to do about the security situation. I even prefer community policing that is properly put together. Community policing is different from state police if it is properly put together; that is what we need. We can decide to decentralize the federal police in a manner that is under the same control.

“When you talk of state police, all the state governors will buy arms in the name of state police and you know what that means. When you are recruiting state police, my political boys will be in the state police. So, let us not think about state police; it is not an area to go.

“So, as a sitting governor, I vehemently opposed it, and till now I am opposed to it, and anywhere it is raised, I oppose it. If you go back to history, there were Native Police but they were disbanded because of the excessive use of force.

“The issue is contentious, and my personal opinion is that I am totally opposed to State Police. It is so contentious that when it came before us at the committee saddled with that, it was so contentious that we had to set up another small committee to go and fine-tune how it will be acceptable to everybody, because people who feel strongly against state police also stated their strong position. Even when we voted, we couldn’t arrive at a consensus, so we set up a committee within the Constitutional Review Committee to go and look at it. We spent four days retreat at Transcorp Hilton on constitutional review, and in most areas, we could not agree on the intended amendments.”

 Commenting on his performance as senator representing Benue North-East, Suswam said,” as Chairman of the Power Committee, most of the projects I have done are in the area of power, such as solar power, mini-grid and also construction of classrooms. The one that I have done that is personal, using my personal money, not through the budget, is the distribution of Keke NAPEP, which I distributed last week to impact on my constituents.”

He said there were a lot of projects like bole holes that he had facilitated through the national budget, adding next week, “I intend to start commissioning virtually all the projects in all the local government areas. In each of the seven local government areas, I have done 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 projects. But the biggest of them is the mini- grid, and I have done two of them – one is at Anwase. That will serve about 300 households, and we have already done the networking that will provide light 24/7. I have also done another one at Atekombu in Ushongo Local Government Area where it will also supply light 24/7 for over 300 households as well.”

“There are a number of other ones that I have done, including the passing of the two constituencies that have been outstanding since 2005,” he added.

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