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El-Rufai says Shehu Sani uses words he does not understand

By Abisola Olasupo
15 January 2019   |   4:23 pm
The governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai has declared a senator representing kaduna State central a 'fraud' over his comment that the state is not qualified to obtain a $350million loan from the world bank. "Shehu Sani is a fraud. he has been a fraud most of his life. He uses this words without understanding…

The governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai has declared a senator representing kaduna State central a ‘fraud’ over his comment that the state is not qualified to obtain a $350million loan from the world bank.

“Shehu Sani is a fraud. he has been a fraud most of his life. He uses this words without understanding what they mean,” the governor said on Channels TV’s RoadMap19.

“There is no way a state government can borrow without clearance from the debt management office of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he added.

The lawmaker in a similar interview said the state is indebted to “over $225million and he (El-Rufai) was asking us to approve $350million for him and then the state will be indebted to over half a billion dollars.”

The Senator maintained that Kaduna being the second most indebted state in the country and also “a non-oil producing state with very low internally generated revenue”  needed to be saved from the “chains and shackles of debt” the governor’s proposal will get the state into.

Sani told the Senate in March that the state government has not even convincingly shown how the loan will be judiciously used and beneficial to the people of the state.

The Senate later rejected the loan request.The upper chamber said if approved, the loan would make Kaduna State the most indebted in Nigeria.

But El-Rufai believed that Sani, who is the chairman of the senate committee on Local and Foreign Debts was instrumental to Senate’s refusal to approve the loan request.

El-Rufai said Sani’s comment on the programme were made in a bid to “justify taking actions against the interest of 10 million people.”

The governor, however, accepted that the state is the second most indebted in the country but insisted that “what is important is not the level of debt but debt sustainability”

He also affirmed that “there is no way the World bank will lend you or anyone money without doing their number.”

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