Babatunde Fashola, works and housing minister says there is nothing wrong in accumulating debts for unborn children.
Mr Fashola stated this while justifying the piling of foreign debts the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has been securing at any given opportunity, a development former president Olusegun Obasanjo, whose administration cleared the country’s debt, kicked against.
Mr Obasanjo described accumulating debts for the next generation as a criminal act.
The unhindered approving of loans by the Nigerian Senate has led critics to tag the Ahmad Lawan-led upper legislative chamber as a rubber stamp of the executive under Mr Buhari.
Speaking to BBC Yoruba, the former Lagos State governor said the administration resorted to borrowing because infrastructures in the country were no longer enough.
“Our infrastructures are no longer enough for us to use. That’s why,” the minister explained. “The children people say we are accumulating debt for, should we wait until they are 40 to start building infrastructure or we build the infrastructure before they are born. Which in is more sensible? They should meet the infrastructure on ground.
“I ask people that the bridge we built in Lagos yesterday in Lekki, should we wait for the children who use the bridge when going to school now to become adults before building the bridge? Is it not better that they use it from when they are small? They should also contribute to it,” he added.
