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The Nigerian Senate has rapidly approved the request of President Bola Tinubu to go for external loans totalling $6 billion.
The approval is coming barely four hours after the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, read the letter from the President, seeking the approval.
The red chamber of the National Assembly approved the loans after the presentation and consideration of a report by the Senator Aliyu Wamakko-led Committee on Local and Foreign Debts.
The Eastern Updates had reported earlier that President Tinubu’s latest loan request was contained in two separate letters addressed to the President of the Senate, which were read during plenary on Tuesday.
In the first letter, Tinubu requested the approval to establish a structured total return swap (TRS) external financing programme of up to $5 billion with First Abu Dhabi Bank of the United Arab Emirates.
The President, in the second letter, also asked the Senate to approve a $1 billion UK export finance loan facility arranged by Citibank, London branch.
He said that the loan would be used for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Lagos Port Complex and Tin Can Island Port.
Nigeria’s Senate has put on hold any deliberation on legislation that would make dual political party membership a criminal offence, saying it cannot act on the bill until the House of Representatives formally transmits it — a procedural stance that has left one of the most contested proposed changes to the country’s electoral laws in limbo.
The House passed the amendment to the Electoral Act 2026 two weeks ago, introducing criminal penalties for Nigerians who simultaneously hold membership in more than one political party. Under the proposed law, anyone found guilty faces a fine of 10 million naira, up to two years in prison, or both — a significant hardening of a rule that already exists on paper but has been enforced, where it has been enforced at all, through administrative rather than criminal mechanisms.
The Senate has not moved. Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramodu, said Friday that the upper chamber’s silence was a matter of constitutional process rather than political reluctance.
“We can’t comment on it until it gets to us,” Adaramodu told Sunday PUNCH. “This law cannot be enacted wholly until it passes through the other chamber. As of now, it has not come to us.”
His clarification points to the architecture of Nigeria’s bicameral legislature, under which any amendment to existing law must clear both chambers before reaching the president for assent. Until the House formally transmits the bill, the Senate has no procedural basis to debate it — regardless of how much public attention the proposal has generated.
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The amendment itself targets a practice that has long frustrated party officials and electoral reformers alike. Nigeria’s current legal framework already bars citizens from belonging to more than one political party simultaneously, but the absence of meaningful criminal consequences has made the prohibition largely theoretical. Politicians who maintain links with multiple parties — particularly during primaries and candidate nomination processes — have faced little beyond internal party discipline, which has itself proved inconsistent and easily circumvented.
The proposed changes introduce three new subsections to Section 77 of the Electoral Act, the provision governing party membership. Beyond the criminal penalties, the amendment states that dual membership would be declared automatically void, with the individual losing recognised membership in any political party until they regularise their status in line with the Act and the relevant party’s own constitution. The stripping of membership status pending regularisation adds a dimension beyond criminal liability — it would, in theory, render a politician without a formal political home during the period of their violation.
Proponents argue the amendment closes loopholes that have made a mockery of the existing single-membership rule. Defections between parties are a persistent feature of Nigerian political life, and disputes over membership registers have generated litigation that has consumed the courts and destabilised party structures in the run-up to multiple election cycles. The argument for criminal sanctions is essentially one of deterrence: that politicians willing to risk administrative consequences would think differently about the prospect of a prison term.
Critics of the proposal have raised concerns about proportionality and enforcement. A two-year prison sentence and a 10 million naira fine for party membership violations places the offence in a category of criminal seriousness that some legal observers argue is disproportionate to the conduct it targets. Enforcement would also require functioning membership registers and verification mechanisms that Nigeria’s political parties have not historically maintained with the rigour a criminal prosecution would demand.
The renewed push for stricter regulation reflects broader frustration with the integrity of Nigeria’s party system, where frequent and sometimes mass defections between parties have blurred distinctions between political organisations and weakened the internal discipline that gives parties their function in a democratic system. The most high-profile defections in recent years have involved sitting legislators, governors and ministers who have crossed party lines under circumstances that raise questions about the commitments they made to their original parties and the voters who elected them on those platforms.
Whether the amendment will survive the Senate intact, be modified, or stall entirely depends on proceedings that have not yet begun. Adaramodu indicated the Senate would engage with the legislation once it arrives, but offered no indication of where his chamber stood on the substance of what the House had passed. The constitutional clock on the current legislative session means the timeline for transmission, committee review, floor debate and a vote is tighter than it might appear.
