The 2023 presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has slammed President Bola Tinubu for not revealing the liabilities inherited from Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Tinubu had in a meeting in Saudi Arabia confirmed that he inherited serious liabilities from his predecessor – but did not give details.
Reacting to the story on Thursday, Obi noted that Tinubu needs to prove transparency and strict accountability by giving details of the inherited debt.
Obi said: “I just read yesterday, a widely publicized 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.
“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.
“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.”
Peter Obi also stated that the alarm raised by the government about the bad state of Nigeria’s finances raises questions about the rationale behind some expenditure items in the supplementary budget recently signed into law.
The former governor of Anambra restated that the cost of governance in Nigeria must be drastically reduced in order to eradicate poverty.
“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,” Obi concluded.