The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, has challenged the Federal Government to disclose the amount inherited from the immediate past administration.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, on Monday, November 13, said the past administration, led by former President Muhammadu Buhari, bankrupted Nigeria.
Ribadu said President Bola Tinubu’s administration inherited a “bankrupt country”.
Reacting to the declaration, Obi, in a series of tweets on his X handle on Thursday, said the federal government should disclose what it inherited from Buhari’s administration for transparency and accountability.
The LP presidential standard-bearer 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.”
He stated APC-led government made a similar claim in 2015 against the PDP’s administration that handed over to the party (APC) “without telling the nation what it actually inherited”.
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Obi added: “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.
“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 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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