Senator Shehu Sani, a former federal lawmaker who represented Kaduna Central at the National Assembly, says if his position and advice were heeded in 2028, the State would not have found itself in the present economic predicament.
Senator Shehu Sani noted that he was insulted and bullied for rejecting the $350 million World Bank loan request by the Kaduna State government under the leadership of former Governor Nasir El-Rufai.
The former lawmaker told journalists in Kaduna on Sunday, March 31, 2024, while reacting to Governor Uba Sani’s lamentation over the huge debt burden of Kaduna State that has made it difficult to pay workers’ salaries, that the hour of reckoning has come for every citizen of the state.
According to Shehu Sani; “If you look at what I said about this State, there has never been any of my predictions that has not come to pass. Today, the state is strangulated because of the money we couldn’t pay. If people had heeded what I had said and understood and agreed with me, we couldn’t have been where we are today.
“We borrowed $350 million when the naira was about N400 to the dollar and we are now going to pay when the naira is what it is today,” he said.
He recalled that in 2018, he, Sani, and two other senators from Kaduna state namely; Suleiman Hunkuyi (APC, Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (PDP Kaduna South) rejected moves by El-Rufai to take a $350 million World Bank loan.
Following their rejection of the loan, then Governor El-Rufai in May 2018, while flagging off a campaign for Local Government elections, rained curses and insults on Sani, Hunkuyi, and Laah for rejecting the loan and urged the people to shave their beards and heads whenever they visit Kaduna.
Following the inability of Senators Shehu Sani and Hunkuyi to return to the Senate in 2019, the coast was cleared for El-Rufai, as Senators Uba Sani and Sulaiman Kwari who took lobbied and facilitated the granting of the loan by the Senate.
El-Rufai had said he had backed up the loan with pictures of rundown schools.
However, Senator Shehu Sani who went spiritual said; “Just like the way Lot (in the Bible) warned people, Prophets of the past warned people, but they refused to hear and then you see perdition and affliction.
“In the same way, I warned the people of this state, but they were told that the money would bring paradise — the land of milk and honey.
“Today, you can see the problems at hand as far as that loan was concerned. If you look at what I said about this state, there have never been any of my predictions that have not come to pass. Today the state is strangulated because of that money we couldn’t pay,” the former lawmaker said.
