Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections, says the federal government should “disclose the degree of deficit inherited” from the immediate past administration.
On Monday, Nuhu Ribadu, the national security adviser (NSA), said the past administration led by ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, bankrupted Nigeria.
“We are facing very serious budgetary constraints. It is okay for me to tell you. It is fine for you to know. We have a very serious situation,” he said during the Chief of Defence Intelligence annual conference.
“We have inherited a very difficult country, a bankrupt country to the extent that we are paying back what was taken. It is serious.”
Reacting to the remarks on Thursday, Obi recalled that the Buhari administration had in 2015 blamed the previous government of running the country aground.
He called for a transparent and accountable government, adding that Nigerians reserve the right to know the actual amount the country owes.
“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,” he wrote on his X page.
“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.
“Rather, they took our debt profile from N12.6 Trillion in 2015 to N87 trillion in 2023 when they left office without improving on any indices of development: Education, Health, Poverty eradication, and Security.”
The former governor of Anambra further advised that the government should stop complaining of being bankrupt and reduce the cost of governance.
“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.
“Also, 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.
“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.”