…OPS flays FG on facility from World Bank

The Organized Private Sector (OPS), has stated that there is need for Nigerians to get more clarity about how the government arrived at the 50 million vulnerable Nigerians who qualified for the disbursement of the World Bank facility by making public beneficiaries’ names on the registers. Speaking in an interview with Saturday Telegraph, a key member of the OPS and the Director of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr. Muda Yusuf, openly said that the government needed to tell Nigerians about the objective of the facility it secured at a period the country’s debt profile is rising astronomically, hitting N46.25 trillion ($103.11 billion) in 2022.

According to him, $800 million World Bank facility was part of the planned MTEF (Medium Term Expenditure Framework) by the government during the presentation of the 2023 Budget Planning only that the OPS operators are concerned whether it’s a loan or grant that the government secured from the World Bank. Yusuf said: “The argument ‘am hearing from them (government) is that this $800 million was part of MTEF. That means that it is something that is already in the pipeline all along, but the government just crystalised it. But what ‘am not sure of are two things; is it a loan or a grant?