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The All Progressives Congress in Niger State on Sunday expressed concern over the debt burden hanging on the state due to reckless loans collected over the years.

A statement by the APC spokesman, Jonathan Vatsa, stated that besides commercial term loans, the government had also gone to the capital market to collect bonds which outstanding debt stock by the end of 2014 stood at N16,347,232,682.81.

Vatsa said the burden was too heavy to carry silently without questions.

He said the sorry state of the state indebtedness continued with the commercial term loans which was N5,462,217.817.38, taken from two commercial banks all between 2013 and the end of 2014.

According to the statement, the APC stated that in September 2013 the state government collected N1bn loan. In February 2014, the statement said a loan of N2.68bn loan was collected. In June 2014, another N2bn loan was collected while in October 2014, N2bn loan was received, it said. It summed up to over N5.4bn commercial bank loans hanging heavily on the state.

The state has balance of outstanding external debt amounting to N4.6bn, apart from the stinky commercial loan taken within 12 months and the huge state and local government pension arrears put at N2.3bn and N7.17bn, respectively.

The amounts stated above bring the total outstanding debt stock of about N36bn hanging on the state by the end of 2014. We challenge the Debt Management Office of the state to come out with the state debt stock.

The statement read, With the above debt stock, the APC is ready to challenge the state government, led by Governor Babangida Aliyu, to a public court on what the loans collected were used to finance.

It said the APC would continue to expose the dangers of allowing the loan and bond collection to continue beyond May 2015.

But the Chief Press Secretary to Niger State Governor, Israel Ebije, has described the N36bn loan allegation by the APC as a move by the opposition to create distraction from what he described as a lost battle to impress the electorate with meaningful manifesto.

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