Senate Approves Buhari’s $22.7bn Loan Request Amidst Protests

The Senate approved the $22.79bn loan request of President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday amidst protests from opposition senators led by the Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Loans, Senator Clifford Ordia, laid the report and was about to read the executive summary when trouble started.

Lawan rejected the suggestion warning that the report may have become a public debate before next week because the press would definitely get copies and publish the contents.

The coast was then clear for Ordia to present the executive summary of his report but his conclusion generated another heated argument among senators.

The senators faulted the two-item recommendation proposed by the Ordia-led panel without furnishing them with details of the projects, the beneficiaries and the amount allocated to each of them.

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Lawan, however, disagreed with them, stressing that by the Senate rules, the report should not be subjected to line by line consideration.

He said, “We are not doing second reading on this. We have recommendations which we will vote on but before we reach that stage, what is here is what is to finance our capital budget.

“It is important we are conscious that we need the capital aspect of the budget funding.”

But Abaribe faulted the position of the Senate President.

He said, “The position is that we would now approve some of this. It is when we get to the point of looking at each one of them that we will now determine which of these projects will help in growing our economy. Now that you have said we will take it line by line

The situation became tensed afterwards and the Senate Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi, saved the day by calling for a closed session, a suggestion earlier made by Senator Gabriel Suswan but overruled by Lawan.

The Senators, however, approved the loan request when they emerged from the 45-minute closed session

Senator Adamu Aliero asked the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, to postpone deliberation on the document until next week to enable them study the report very well.