Human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana, SAN has threatened legal action against the Federal Government if it make good its plan to borrow loan to finance the 2016 budget.
In a letter to the minister of finance, Falana argued that rather than borrowing fresh loan, government should strive to recover debts owed it by different groups and institutions.
According to him, it was real that the government has decided to apply for a loan of $2.5 billion from the World Bank and $1 billion from the African Development Bank for the purpose of financing the 2016 Budget, in spite of its debt profile of $64 billion.
Urging the government to desist from taken the loans, Falana asked that it embarks on the immediate recovery of outstanding loans and accrued revenues payable to the federation account.
He maintained that going for the loans will further burdened Nigerians.
The lawyer disclosed that from records, the Federal Government is owed nothing less than $66.5 billion which ought to be recovered without any further delay.
He listed the recoverable debts to include “the potential recoverable revenues payable to the Federation Account are not less than $20,221,018,007.00 (Twenty billion, two hundred and twenty one million, eighteen thousand, and seven hundered dollars only).”
The debts were said to have arisen from “underpayment/underassessment of taxes, royalties, levies and rents,” according to five cycles of independent audit reports compiled by the National Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI)
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