Apply OBJ’s style of debt forgiveness from Creditors – Afe Babalola urges Tinubu

Adebayo Adenrele




A legal icon, Aare Afe Babalola, has called on the President-elect, Bola Tinubu to apply former President Obasanjo’s style of debt forgiveness for Nigeria from creditors’ Countries and multilateral financial Institutions, in order to pave the way for more foreign Investors in Nigeria.

Afe Babalola, who is also the founder and Chancellor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, ABUAD stated this on Sunday in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.

Babalola, at a Lecture titled: “Smart Infrastructure: Catalyst for Sustainable Development”, said forgiveness or cancellation would help relieve Nigeria of humongous foreign debts, adding that lion share of the country’s resources were being used to service debt obligations.

The legal luminary, who lamented the current state of the country’s debt profile, expressed sadness that the debt incurred were not channeled appropriately but were spent on questionable priorities.

He also attributed the ballooning debt profile to lack of discipline and inefficiency of government spending, urging Tinubu to cut expenditures and undertake reform that would scale down governance cost as well as ease fiscal burden.

He thereby admonished the president-elect to take a cue from Olusegun Obasanjo who, spent first two years of his administration globetrotting to seek forgiveness for the country’s debt from its lenders.

In his words, “Today, We are the worst debtors in the world. We owe trillions of dollars. We are borrowing more even when the current government is few days to go. And we learnt that our incoming President has gone to look for those who are coming to invest here. Have you ever heard of any man who is very stupid enough invest in a bankrupt country? They will never do so.

“What I expect the incoming President to do is to learn from Obasanjo who spent the first two years of his administration in going round to beg for forgiveness of our debt. Nobody is coming to invest here when you can’t even pay the interest due on the huge debt that we owed”, he added.