The presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the election scheduled for February 25th, Peter Obi, has challenged the Federal Government to disclose the national debt accrued during President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari’s government left the nation in financial ruin, which National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu lamented on Monday.
He said that the money that Tinubu’s administration has made is going toward paying back the things that have been pilfered from the nation.
The former governor of Anambra State, however, claimed in a series of tweets on his X page on Thursday that the FG should reveal the deficit it inherited from the previous All Progressives Congress administration in order to show how accountable and transparent it is.
When it was claimed in 2015 that the former Goodluck Jonathan-led administration was responsible for the inherited deficit, Obi criticized the Buhari administration for failing to disclose it.
The tweets read, “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.
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“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.”
The LP presidential candidate further stressed the significance of spending public funds on development sectors like education, security and healthcare, among others.
“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.
“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,” he stated.
Obi also noted that the FG should reduce its cost of governance, as the citizens await “measurable and verifiable steps” to ameliorate the nation’s economy.
“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,” the tweet concluded.
