Legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola on Sunday at Ado-Ekiti urged the in-coming administration of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to prioritise debt forgiveness from Nigeria’s creditor countries, Politics Nigeria reports
He advised the in-coming admistration to also prioritise debt forgiveness from multilateral financial institutions.
The proprietor of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti gave the advice on the side-line of a lecture delivered at the university by Professor of Intelligent Infrastructure System, Prof. Bamidele Adebisi.
The lecture was entitled: “Smart infrastructure: Catalyst for sustainable development.’’
Babalola argued that debt forgiveness or cancellation would help to relieve Nigeria of its foreign debt overhang, noting that the country currently uses sizeable percentage of its revenue on debt servicing.
In his words:“Have you ever heard of a man who would be stupid enough to go and invest in a bankrupt country?
“We owed trillions of dollars and we are still borrowing more even as the present administration has few days to go.
The Chancellor, said smart Infrastructure depends on availability of necessary infrastructure itself, which ABUAD was doing already.
He also enjoined the in-coming administration to cut expenditures and undertake reforms that would scale down governance costs as well as ease the country’s fiscal burden.
In the lecture, Prof. Adebisi said technology had become a game- changer to address challenges in the areas of food production and transportation.
He stressed the importance of technology across all sectors of development, noting that technology had become the catalyst for societal development.
