Why We Are probing El-Rufai’s Loans – Kaduna Assembly speaker

Speaker of Kaduna State House for Assembly, Yusuf Liman, has explained why the House is probing the loans collected by the administration of the immediate past governor of the state, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.

Liman spoke on Tuesday after the House set up a 13-man committee on fact-finding of financial dealings, loans and grants, and other project implementations from 2015-2023 under El-Rufai’s tenure.

He assured said the matter would be properly looked into, saying they will give each and everyone the liberty to speak the truth

“We just want to analyze the last administration’s spendings so that we can stand with our shoulders high by the time we finish from the assembly, we do not want anyone to call us rubber stamp legislators, we are not going to do this investigation to ridicule anybody, but we will do the right thing,” he said.

This is coming two weeks after El-Rufai’s successor, Senator Uba Sani, stated that his administration inherited a huge debt burden of $587 million, N85 billion, and 115 contractual liabilities from his predecessor.

Governor Sani lamented that due to the rise in the exchange rate, the state is now paying back almost triple of what was borrowed by the previous administration.

Explaining that the huge debt burden was eating deep into the state’s federal allocation, he said N7bn out of the N10bn federal allocation for the state in March was deducted to service the state’s debt.

The governor further lamented that the state was left with N3bn, an amount he said was not enough to pay salaries, as the state’s monthly salary bill stood at N5.2 billion.

Although one of El-Rufai’s sons went after the governor, whom he accused of incompetence, the former governor refrained from public comment.

At a Capacity-Enhancement Workshop for Senior Government Officials in Borno State, on Monday, where he was lead speaker, El-Rufai made allusion to governance in Kaduna, saying he did not want to be a godfather.

He said he had only visited Kaduna five times since he left office almost a year ago because he wanted Sani to learn.

“I don’t want to be a godfather and that’s why I don’t interfere in what is happening in Kaduna, I want him (the governor) to learn and get the job by himself.”

He also rated Professor Babagana Zulum of Borno as Nigeria’s best governor.