Nigerian Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, has signalled the readiness of the ninth Senate to approve the $29.96 billion loan request by President Muhammadu Buhari three years after it was rejected by the eight Senate led by Bukola Saraki. He maintained that should the last Senate had approved the request, Nigeria’s external debt could have leaned to over $52billion. Though the Senate President, a senator in the last Senate, said the loan request was rejected earlier in the eighth Senate due in part to its lack of necessary details which have now been provided. This is high and even higher in Nigeria which spends about 50 per cent revenue on external debt servicing“In Nigeria, about half of the revenue is used to service external debt. The increasing domestic debt burden means that the total proportion of the revenue spent on servicing debt is even higher.

Source: Nigerian Tribune December 18, 2019 17:37 UTC