By DEJI ABDULWAHAB

A group of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) has called on Nigerians to engage the Federal Government to explain how $3.4 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocated to Nigeria in 2021 was utilised.

The Acting Executive Director, Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), Leo Atakpu, gave the advice in Abuja on Friday at the launching of a Report on the Utilisation of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) in Abuja.

Atakpu said that Nigeria received $3.4 billion SDR from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in August 2021 to cushion the effect of COVID-19.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that SDR is a form of financing instrument that a country gets from IMF as a member country in times of global financial crisis like COVID-19.

ANEEJ boss said two countries, Chad and Zimbabwe, had spent their SDR to boost agriculture, interrogating how SDR allocated to Nigeria was spent and what was it used for?

According to him, ANEEJ has organised a three-day Capacity Building Workshop, in partnership with AFRODAD and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to track SDR funds and raising citizens’ voices to end debt crises in West Africa.

At a panel discussion, Prince Chris Azor, President, International Peace and Civic Responsibility Centre (IPCRC), urged Nigerians to request government to account for the IMF’s SDR as they have the rights to know according to the Nigerian Constitution.

According to him, it behoves on citizens to demand for accountability and transparency of this SDR funds.

Also speaking, the Executive Director, Keen and Care Initiative (KCI), Josephine Alabi, underscored the need for Nigerians to ask questions on how SDR was spent and how was it used.

Also, Dr Ambrose Igboke, Chairman, Guild of Public Affairs Analyst, said the nation’s leaders do what they do because nobody interrogates what they are doing.

“In developed countries, their citizens hold their leaders accountable by asking right questions while in the developing world, leaders do what they like,” he said.

The Programme Officer, Gender and Development Action, Inyingi Irimagha, said in spite of the SDR funds allocated to Nigeria, SDR did not strengthen the oil sector.

NAN recalls that Nigeria received its first SDR in the 70s when there was oil glut, recording second SDR in 1979 during gulf war, economic meltdown in 2009 and in 2021 due to COVID-19. (Text, excluding headline: NAN)

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