Hours after National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu revealed that the President had inherited a bankrupt nation from the Previous administration, Peter Obi has reacted to the Statement.
The Former Presidential candidate of the Labour Party who is also a major opposition leader took to his X official handle register his opinion.
According to Peter Obi, the claim of bankruptcy by the presidency was without foundation and that the present administration has not disclosed the level of Nigeria’s financial woes.
In his words:
“I just read yesterday, a widely publicised story from the present APC-led Federal Government saying that they inherited a bankrupt nation from their predecessor APC administration. But the story failed to disclose what they inherited, which had qualified us for bankruptcy status,”
One major characteristic of responsible governance is transparency and strict accountability. This demands that the government disclose exactly the degree of deficit they inherited. What is inherited should be disclosed to enable the public to know where we are and where we are headed. Recall that the previous APC Government made a similar claim in 2015 against the PDP administration that handed over to them without telling the nation what it actually inherited.”
Obi berated the current administration for increasing Nigeria’s debt profile from N12.6 trillion in 2015 to N87 trillion in 2023 while failing to improve any of the country’s development indicators like health, power, education or poverty rate.
“Instead, the condition of the nation on every development index got worse, leading to the present sad state. Nigerians know things are bad, and they experience it daily. What they now want to hear regularly are measurable and verifiable steps to improve the situation,” Obi said.
Obi also faulted some of the provisions of the just signed 2023 supplementary budget, adding that it failed to capture initiatives to develop relevant sectors.
“The alarm raised by the government about the bad state of our finances raises questions about the rationale behind some expenditure items in the supplementary budget recently signed into law,” Obi said.
“The present revelation also goes to buttress the argument that I have made since electioneering season that the cost of governance is too high and must be drastically reduced. A bankrupt country should channel every available resource into funding critical development sectors like security, healthcare, education, and eradication of poverty by addressing youth unemployment, not spending in non-essential areas. So, what we expect are measurable and verifiable steps to improve the situation.”
