Nigeria has received a $3.4 billion emergency fund from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), less than 24 hours after receiving $311 million of stolen money stashed in the United States and Jersey island.
The IMF reported that Nigeria requested the money under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) and that this was approved on April 28.
The US cash represented the amount recovered from what Head of State Sani Abacha looted.
General Abacha, who hid most of his assets in foreign banks, was Nigeria’s military Head of State from 1993 until his death in 1998.
The fund from IMF, at a 3.4 per cent interest rate, is refundable in five years.
IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said it will help Nigeria deal with economic troubles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nigeria, she explained, got the money because it exceeded the safeguards for its disbursement.
The repatriated $311 million from the assets of the late Abacha will be used according to terms reached with the United States.
Malam Garba Shehu, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesperson, said in a statement on May 5 that the money will be used for critical capital projects as agreed.
The fund, he said, will be used to finance the ongoing Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger bridge and Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Expressway.
“Part of the funds will also be invested into the Mambilla Power Project which, when completed, will provide electricity to some three million homes – over 10 million citizens – in our country,” he said.
“The receipt of these stolen monies – and the hundreds of millions more that have already been returned from the United Kingdom and Switzerland – present an opportunity for the development of our nation, made far harder for those decades the country was robbed of these funds.
“The latest return is a testament to the growing and deepening relationship between the government of Nigeria and the government of the United States. Without cooperation from the UK government, the US executive branch and the US Congress, we would not have achieved the return of these funds at all.”
He confirmed that $320 million had earlier been repatriated from Switzerland from some of the assets hidden in that country by the late Abacha.
Meanwhile, Nigeria has cut its crude benchmark for the 2020 budget to $20 per barrel from $30.
The figure shows a $37 per barrel cut from the initial $57 per barrel.
Finance, budget and planning minister Zainab Ahmed confirmed in a web conference that the money will be channelled into reviving the economy, which she said may contract by up to 3.4 per cent this year.
The pandemic would impoverish more Nigerians under a wobbling economy that already has more than 82.9 million poor people.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which released a report on May 3 on Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria 2019, said 40.1 per cent of the population was poor.
An average of four out of 10 individuals had real per capita expenditures of below $450 per year, meaning their monthly income was less than $38.
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