The Senate announced on Thursday that it has put machinery in place to check abuses in the utilisation of foreign loans by state governors.
This was the outcome of a meeting between the upper legislative chamber and World Bank officials at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja.
Among such measures is the retooling of appropriate committees at the respective state houses of assembly to ensure proper oversight of the Executive at the state levels.
Checks on the website of the Debt Management Office (DMO) on Thursday revealed that the total foreign debts of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, as well as the Federal Government of Nigeria, was $15million as of June 30, 2017.
Addressing journalists after the meeting, Senate Leader, Ahmad Lawan, said the move by the Senate was in line with the need for fiscal discipline in public spending, especially on monies borrowed by the affected government in form of loans to facilitate development and prevent diversion of such funds.
He said: “The National Assembly participates in a limited way in grantng states loans from international agencies including the World Bank. Normally the Federal Government guarantees certain loans to states and therefore the National Assembly scrutinises the programmes and projects that are lined for utilisation of those loans.
“In ensuring proper utilization of such loans by respective state governments, we have met with World Bank officials. We have given our honest advice to them on how to bring about fiscal discipline by state governments on such loans.
“One of which is to ensure that state Houses of Assembly Committees like that of appropriations Public Accounts Committee and the one on Finance are given some kind of support by the World Bank to ensure that they have the capacity to scrutinise and oversight the utilisation of such funds.
“Also, the office of the Auditor General for every state should be enhanced and the capacity of such staff of the offices of the Auditor General must be better so that they write very credible and deep reports of such utilisation of funds and of course those who will be implementing the projects, those who will be spending the money in the offices of the Commissioners of Finance, Budget and Planning should also be supported and reformed”.
The deliberation according to him, was very fruitful and strategic in preventing reckless spending of such funds by state governors.
He however said that debt profile of states that had collected such loans were not discussed at the meeting as to know whether any of the states had surpassed its financial capability for such loans.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
