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A
member of the House of Representatives, Ita Enang, has accused the
National Assembly of granting hasty approvals to executive requests for
foreign loans, calling the approvals “mistakes” that have raised
Nigeria’s debt to the highest in four years.

Mr. Enang, chairman
of the House’s committee on business and rules, said yesterday the
failure of the House in particular, to examine the requests sent to
them by the executive arm, before approvals, led to several erroneous
endorsements that have now lifted national debt to $4.3 billion.

“For example, if
the National Assembly had read through the document of the latest
proposal brought to us by the executive to approve $915 million loan
from World Bank, we couldn’t have approved it,” he said at the second
day of the House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee meeting on
Nigeria’s local and foreign loans.

“The Fiscal
Responsibility Act says the National Assembly should examine and
approve the terms and conditions, but we don’t examine, before we
approve. We just approve and it goes.

“50 percent of
these loans are marketed by people at the World Bank; they market these
loans and take their percentages, sometime 1.5%, and so on. You hire
their consultants and you pay them from the same loan you have taken;
and at the end of the day, you still pay them,” he added.

Mr. Enang’s
committee is the major planning body of the House and is largely
responsible in deciding when and if, matters brought before the chamber
would be given legislative attention.

Rising debt levels

His comments would
be viewed as weighty representation of a part of procedural failures
that have characterised the working of the federal legislature. Between
2009 and date, the executive arm under the late president, Umar
Yar’Adua, and the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, have sought and secured
authorisations from the lawmakers, for foreign loans amounting to more
than $1 billion.

In each case of the
loan applications, their respective approvals received speedy treatment
and passage at both chambers of the National Assembly, most times over
ruling dissenting opinions of many members.

Finance minister, Olusegun Aganga, who also attended the event on
Monday, disclosed that Nigeria’s debt has risen from $3.54 billion in
2006 to the present $4.3 billion, rated by ending of March 2010.