The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi has questioned the Federal Government over claims that it inherited a bankrupt nation from the previous administration of Muhammadu Buhari. Reacting in a statement released on Thursday, Nov. 16, Obi said that the Federal Government’s claims were “without foundation.” According to him, this is because the government had failed to disclose the full extent of the country’s financial problems.
Obi said, “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 said that the Federal Government had increased the country’s debt from N12.6 trillion in 2015 to N87 trillion in 2023 and that the government had failed to improve any of the country’s key development indices, including education, health, poverty eradication, and security.
He added, “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 also questioned the rationale behind some of the expenditure items in the supplementary budget recently signed into law. “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.”
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