Okowa allegedly borrows
There is more than one indication that the mass defection of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP governors, Senators, Reps, and other leaders may have set governor Ifeanyi Okowa on overdrive in pacifying his party loyalists to avoid further depletion of the party under his stewardship in Delta State, OpenLife Nigeria gathers.
In quick succession, many PDP governors across geo-political zones have found a haven in the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC, a development that has been causing sleepless nights with PDP’s enclave.
Badly hit is governor Okowa when Senator Peter Onyeluka Nwaoboshi, representing his Delta North senatorial district in the Nigerian Senate, recently dumped the party for the APC with warning signals that others would follow soon.
To arrest the ugly trend, governor Okowa was said to have reached out to the State House of Assembly for approval to take an N4.1 billion loan.
In his letter to the house, Okowa explained that the approved N4 billion loan enabled his administration to complete ongoing people-orientated projects, but these projects to be funded with the loan were not mentioned.
However, inside sources disclosed that the loan is to be used to fund the buying of utility vehicles and pacify some disgruntled party stakeholders not to leave the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ahead of the 2023 gubernatorial election.
Already, the state is heavily indebted. Despite the massive rising domestic debt profile of the state, the current loan is coming at N213 billion as of March 2021 amidst declining infrastructure under the Governor Okowa regime.
The state emerged as the fourth-highest most indebted state in Nigeria in the Domestic and Foreign Debt Report 2021 by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The report shows that Lagos leads with N507 billion debt, Rivers follows with N377 billion, Akwa Ibom N232 billion, and Delta with N213 billion.
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