Will Nigerians be able to survive the repercussions should the present Muhammadu Buhari led government fail to do the needful about these humongous loans from China? A number of Nigerians have expressed worry.
Interestingly, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has revealed that the Nigerian government is about to borrow a fresh $3billion from China.
This is coming at a time there are controversies trailing the Federal Government’s planned securement of $500million loan from China.
Recall that the House of Res had raised an alarm over clauses in Article 8 (1) of the Commercial Loan Agreement signed between Nigeria and the Export-Import Bank of China.
In the said agreement, Nigeria stands to concede her sovereignty to China should there be a default in the repayment of the $400million for the Nigerian National Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone phase 2 project signed in 2018.
Part of the agreement said that: “The borrower hereby irrevocably provides waives any immunity on the grounds of sovereign or otherwise for itself or its property in connection with any arbitration pursuit to Article 85 thereof with the enforcement of any arbitral award pursuit thereto except for the military asset and diplomatic asset.”
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However, Amaechi asked the National Assembly members not to probe the loan issue too much as according to him doing so could scare the lender.
He noted that the country might lose a chance of getting another $3billion loan which the Nigerian government planned to use in executing the rail from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri.
His words, "The reason why I said that is because we have already applied for $5.3billion to execute the rail from Ibadan to Kano. We are about applying for about $3billion to execute the rail from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri."