The African Democratic Congress Presidential Campaign Council has challenged President Bola Tinubu to account for loans obtained by his administration, alleging that Nigerians have yet to see commensurate infrastructure development despite the country’s rising debt burden.
The council’s Director of Media and Publicity, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated this in a statement issued in Abuja in reaction to a remark by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, that “the question is what we build, not how much we borrow.”
The ADC-PCC described the statement as an insult to Nigerians, accusing the Tinubu administration of accumulating debts without delivering tangible projects capable of improving the living conditions of citizens.
Ologbondiyan alleged that the administration’s most visible intervention in electricity supply was a solar farm installed to provide power within the Presidential Villa, while millions of Nigerians continued to endure unreliable electricity.
He said, “For three and a half wasted years, the Tinubu government has borrowed without restraint and built nothing. No value, no legacy, no impact.
“Except for projects inherited from the late President Muhammadu Buhari, many of the projects being advertised by the Tinubu administration are nothing but audio projects. They exist only on paper, as conceptual designs or as announcements in newspapers and on television.”
The campaign council also questioned the progress of major road projects, including the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway and Trans-Sahara Superhighway, describing them as examples of projects whose implementation, according to it, had not matched government publicity.
It further cited the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway, which it said had remained a source of concern for motorists despite being awarded more than eight years ago, while accusing the administration of prioritising propaganda over effective governance.
The ADC-PCC said Nigerians were grappling with hunger, insecurity, poverty and economic hardship, urging Tinubu to identify tangible projects completed with the loans secured since he assumed office in 2023.
“The only thing this administration has successfully built is hardship. If borrowing is truly for development, let President Tinubu show Nigerians one tangible project his administration has delivered with its trillions of naira in loans, beyond the solar farm in the Presidential Villa,” the statement added.
The opposition campaign council also appealed to international donors, development partners and financial institutions to subject further loans to Nigeria to stricter scrutiny, transparency and accountability.
It called on the National Assembly to exercise its constitutional oversight responsibilities and scrutinise loan requests rather than approve them without adequate consideration, warning that future generations should not be saddled with debts without demonstrable benefits.
