The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Ikanade Agba has come out to say that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is borrowing funds for infrastructure upgrade and social welfare packages.

He recently revealed this at Lejja, Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State during the inspection of an ongoing 7.5 killometers COVID-19 Rural Roads Intervention Project of the Federal Government which cut across Aku, Lejja and Nsukka communities in Enugu State.

According to him, the loans were acquired with only 3% interest rate, and they were gotten with 10-20 years moratorium, so Nigerians have nothing to worry about.

He added that contrary to popular opinion in the country, Buhari is actually very concerned about Nigerians and their livelihood.

His words, “A lot of people talk about the borrowings by the present government. You need to understand the terms and conditions of the loans we are taking and what they are being used for. What is bad is when you borrow to eat, but if you borrow for something productive, you benefit.”

“The interest rates we are paying for these loans we are taking is not up to 3% and we have 10-20 years moratorium, that is, within those periods, we are not paying anything and some of the loans have up to 40 years repayment period. So, if you look at what it would take to pay back the loans we are taking, it could be considered as gifts.”

“We are trying to connect our rural roads to urban roads and to the railways. You could see that we are spending a lot of money across the country on roads construction, but if we don’t develop our rail sector, our roads would continue to fail because of the pressure on them. In other more developed countries, heavy things are being moved on rails. That’s what we are trying to do.”

“Buhari is very concerned about you, and the livelihoods of all Nigerians and he has said that Nigeria must produce what they eat, and we must eat what we produce and agriculture has to be the mainstake of our economy.”