By; AMOS TAUNA, Kaduna
A former federal lawmaker who represented Kaduna Central at the National Assembly, Senator Shehu Sani has said that Kaduna State would not have found itself in the present economic predicament, if his position and advice were heeded.
Senator Shehu Sani said, “I was insulted and bullied for rejecting the $350 million World Bank loan request by the Kaduna State government under the leadership of former Governor Nasir el-Rufai.”
Speaking to newsmen in Kaduna on Sunday while reacting to Governor Uba Sani’s lamentation over the huge debt burden of Kaduna State, the former lawmaker noted that has made it difficult to pay workers’ salaries, saying that the hour of reckoning has come for every citizen of the state.
According to Shehu Sani, if you look at what he said about the state, there has never been any of his predictions that has not come to pass, saying that today, the state is strangulated because of the money it couldn’t pay.
“If people had heeded what I had said and understood and agreed with me, we couldn’t have been where we are today,” he explained.
Shehu Sani said that the state borrowed $350 million when the Naira was about N400 to the dollar, lamenting that now the state is going to pay when the Naira is what it is today.
He explained that in 2018, himself and two other senators from Kaduna State namely; Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC, Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (PDP Kaduna South) rejected moves by el-Rufai to take a $350 million World Bank loan, adding that following their rejection of the loan, then Governor el-Rufai in May 2018, while flagging off a campaign for local government elections, rained curses and insults on Sani, Hunkuyi, and Laah for rejecting the loan and urged the people to shave their beards and heads whenever they visit Kaduna.
He explained that following the inability of himself and Hunkuyi to return to the Senate in 2019, the coast was cleared for el-Rufai, as Senators Uba Sani and Sulaiman Kwari lobbied and facilitated the granting of the loan by the Senate, lamenting that el-Rufai had said he had backed up the loan with pictures of rundown schools.
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