The hue and cry about Nigeria's foreign debt

                        Femi Falana

There are by some reckoning three 
categories of people in the world viz those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who do not know what is happening.
All the categories have their high and low points because the rich also cry.
An interesting category among these trio is those who do not know what is happening. Usually, they are in the majority.
Where does Nigeria belong? The beauty of the classification is that like in Guinness book of World records, there are categories and there are categories. While in two categories namely Sports and crime, Nigeria can liberally be named in the first category, in science and technology we can safely be placed among those who do not know what is happening.
In the matter of our foreign debt according to the Nigerian Debt Management Office our total external debt as at 31st March 2020 is roughly $28b.
This amount is categorized into three namely Multilateral, Bilateral and Commercial.
The Multilateral loans are from International bodies like World Bank and ADB.
The Bilateral loans are from Individual  countries like China and France.
The commercial loans are from Investors like banks and Individuals.
The cheapest of these loans are the multilateral loans and the most stringent are the commercial loans.
Of our total debt stock of $28b - $13 b are multilateral, $4b are bilateral and $11b are commercial.
The hue and cry are about getting the attention of those who do not know, what is going on.

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