Senator-elect and billionaire business mogul, Dr Jimoh Ibrahim, has proposed a plan for Nigeria to repay its debts within 90 days.
Speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Ibrahim said the authorities should approach five EXIM banks, and collect a loan that is five times the current debt.
“I can give you a strategy that can make you pay back the debts in 90 days. All you have to do is to call five EXIM banks, including China EXIM bank,” he said on Monday.
“Take a loan about five times whatever you are owing currently, do a bridge gap financing, and then pay off what you are owing. Then you will have a surplus, do a repayment programme for 40 years and then have an honorarium period of 10 years and you are out of the debt.”
During the programme, the Ondo-born businessman also spoke about Nigeria’s security challenges, especially the Boko Haram insurgency that has ravaged the nation for over a decade.
He described Boko Haram as a political problem, asking the President to return Nigerian troops back to their barracks.
“Boko Haram is a political problem. You have to socialise politically to solve Boko haram. The first thing Mr President has to do is to withdraw soldiers from the front(line) and return them back to the barracks,” he stated.
“Children that left NDA as a lieutenant, they have become major-general and the war is still there. Is the military a challenge to ourselves? No.”
As Nigerian authorities have been battling insurgency for over a decade, the lawmaker said the military has been deploying a conventional strategy to approach unconventional war.
He blamed the alleged failure in the fight against terrorism on the strategy deployed by the authorities in the Northeast.
According to Ibrahim, Africa’s most populous nation has spent a whopping $1.2 trillion fighting insurgency within the last 10 years.
Rather than deploying troops to the theatre of operations, the businessman wants the Nigerian government to “look for information gathering, socialization, you need to meet stakeholders, you have to do meetings”.
On the way forward, Ibrahim advised President Bola Tinubu to “go into political socialization. You have to socialise domestically. Assuming you have spent 10 per cent of $1.2 trillion on political socialisation, Boko Haram would have disappeared.
“But you spent 89 per cent on a factor that is not significant to confront Boko Haram, Boko Haram will still be there.”
