Public affairs commentator, Mahdi Shehu, has accused the National Assembly of playing politics with its plan to probe the $460 million Chinese loan secured by former President Goodluck Jonathan for the Abuja Metropolitan CCTV project.
He described the move as politically motivated and hypocritical.
In a post shared on X on Thursday night, Shehu said the investigation amounted to “a desperate exercise in futility” and “an attempt to dance naked in the marketplace while angels are cursing the dancers.”
He said revisiting a project approved over a decade ago reflects “limitless shamelessness” and “an unintelligent desperate excursion into dirty, smelly, murky waters.”
“Jonathan has suddenly become an enemy that must be destroyed, restrained, or intimidated because of 2027; a year where nobody even has the guarantee to reach,” he wrote.
Shehu maintained that the CCTV loan was duly processed and approved by the National Assembly during Jonathan’s administration, unlike several loans obtained by subsequent governments.
He compared the country’s debt profiles across administrations, noting that Jonathan left a debt stock of about ₦12 trillion, which grew to ₦77 trillion under former President Muhammadu Buhari, while the current administration under President Bola Tinubu has reportedly collected ₦144 trillion “and is still counting.”
“Unlike Buhari’s and Tinubu’s excruciating loan jamboree, Jonathan’s CCTV loan was subjected to legislative processes and duly approved by the National Assembly,” Shehu stated.
The outspoken critic accused lawmakers of selective investigations, alleging that they had ignored more questionable transactions under previous and current administrations.
“If the National Assembly has any sense of investigative decency, they should be probing Buhari’s N30 trillion ‘Ways and Means’ obtained in absolute secrecy and defended by the rubber stamp Senate of that regime,” he added.
Shehu also questioned why there had been no probe into what he described as Tinubu’s convenient loans, which he claimed had risen to ₦150 trillion, or the alleged ₦7 trillion 2025 budget padding and ₦10.5 trillion constituency projects that reportedly failed.
He further cited unresolved issues such as the alleged ₦210 trillion unaccounted proceeds from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) between 2017 and 2023, and the $7 billion meant for refinery repairs that allegedly disappeared without a trace.
“Just last week, the Finance Minister claimed that they distributed N330 billion to vulnerable groups with no single verifiable evidence. Yet the National Assembly stood on ‘his mandate,’” Shehu wrote.
He lamented that lawmakers had ignored the worsening plight of Nigerians battling poverty and hunger.
“Currently, 139 million Nigerians are living in squalor and abject poverty, with 39 million malnourished children and 69 million out-of-school children, while university lecturers and doctors are on strike. But none of these concerns interest the National Assembly to probe,” he said.
“All these victims of injustice are praying daily and the day their prayers are answered will be the day of regret at a time when regret has no value.
“Nigerians are still waiting for the National Assembly to hold a public hearing and probe of the findings of Mr Obaze who investigated the central bank,” he added.