It appears Nigerian government officials are not reading between the lines in the loans they are receiving from the Chinese. Apparently taken in by what appears to be easy money being offered by the Chinese, Nigerian officials are unrestrainedly taking all manners of loans from Chinese financial institutions without recourse to reading and understanding the terms of the loans. Appearing before the House of Representatives Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements, Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, speaking at the hearing, stated that the committee should put a hold on its probe on\u00a0 Nigeria\u2019s loans from China, as this may cause the Chinese government to refuse Nigeria\u2019s pending loan requests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigerians are concerned that the Chinese loans are being taken without regard to Nigeria\u2019s sovereign interest or manner of disbursement and utilisation of the loans. Indeed, Nigerians had accused its government officials of signing off on loans in return and without scrutinising its contents, which often is skewed against Nigeria\u2019s national interest. China is known to be very shrewd and manipulative in its business dealings with Nigerian officials. Chinese companies operating in the country do so with little or no ethical restraint. In a recent national scandal, a Chinese company, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) was reported to have offered scholarships to the children and relations of Nigerian public officials in manners that could be considered as a bribe. Indeed, these companies offer favours to government officials for favourable consideration of their contracts. A resident of Abuja criticising Chinese contracts points to a sizeable number of road construction in the Federal Capital city that have been on-going for no less than 7 years and are nowhere near completion, some of them completely abandoned. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) only a few months ago, arrested a contractor in Sokoto State, who had collected multi-billion road contracts, abandoned it and was offering a bribe of N100 million to EFCC officials to avoid arrest. Although the issue of Chinese loans was again brought into the public spotlight by a National Assembly committee hearing last week, Nigerians are also worried that the National Assembly has been complicit in failing to scrutinise loan requests by the Executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been growing concern among Nigerians over the Federal\nGovernment\u2019s loan agreements with China, following the committee\u2019s investigation,\nwhich revealed a Sovereignty Guaranty clause in some of the agreements. The\nclause empowers China to take over assets constructed with the loan sums, in\nthe event that Nigeria defaults in meeting the terms of repayment on these\nloans. Nigeria has procured several loans from China and citizens worry that\nthis may be detrimental to the nation in the long run as it continues to\naccumulate debt. Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi speaking on a television\ninterview on Chinese loans taken for transport infrastructure, stated that\nNigeria is capable of repaying these loans, which have an interest rate of\n2.8%, a repayment period of 20 years and seven years moratorium. The minister\nalso reiterated his call to the National Assembly to halt its probe of a $500\nmillion Chinese loan taken by the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the\nconstruction of the Abuja-Kaduna railway, adding that the Federal Government\nhas repaid $96 million of the loan sum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Nigeria\u2019s Debt Management Office, Nigeria has an outstanding debt of $3.12 billion from Chinese loans, having repaid the sum of $461.89 million. These loans are tied to several road, rail, power, communication, and agricultural projects. Observers worry that Nigeria may fall into the debt trap of the Chinese, who have become a major financial lender to many African countries. Nigerians worry that the government has continually sacrificed national interest in bilateral agreements by signing contracts with detrimental conditions and clauses while prioritising the personal interests of a few actors. It will be recalled that the Federal Government has been in a legal tussle, over an agreement with British firm, P&ID for a gas project, which appears to be no more than a scam. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It appears Nigerian government officials are not reading between the lines in the loans they are receiving from the Chinese. Apparently taken in by what appears to be easy money being offered by the Chinese, Nigerian officials are unrestrainedly taking all manners of loans from Chinese financial institutions without recourse to reading and understanding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-concern-rises-over-nigerias-china-loans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1627,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}