Domestic debt grows

Nigeria's domestic debt is now =N=2.58 trillion ($17.59 billion at the time of the report) and rising.

And the states are rushing to issue bonds. There are still no effective statutory controls on the acquisition of debt, nothing to allow citizens have a say on the extra burden they (and their governments) will have to bear in the future to pay for loans to do .... well to do what exactly? Are the prior projects paid for with loans now earning enough to repay those loans? If they are not, is there anything in place to make sure the new loan-backed projects can repay the loans? Since the (manipulated and rigged) 2007 elections were a travesty, we have not given any governor our permission to govern us, much less to commit us to paying for projects that were not debated during the polls and that we never gave our electoral permission for.

Debt is not what worries me. It is necessary.

What worries me is we have not reformed the method of decision-making that got us into a debt crisis before the rather expensive ($12 billion in lost capital) Okonjo-Iweala deal. If we are still making decisions the same way we did before, what is to say we do not end up back where we were before?

Reform and transformation are of paramount necessity.