Former presidential candidate, Peter Obi has asked the Bola Tinubu administration to disclose what it inherited from the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration so that Nigerians can be adequately informed.
Obi said this in a Thursday statement, days after National Security Adviser (NSA) claimed that the previous administration left “literally a bankrupt country”.
Recall that Buhari’s government made a similar claim in 2015 against the Goodluck Jonathan administration that handed over to it without telling the nation what it inherited.
Reacting, Obi said that Tinubu’s government would be toeing the path of transparency and accountability by disclosing the deficit inherited from the previous administration.
“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.
“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,” Obi said.
The 2023 Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate said that Nigerians know things are bad, and they experience it daily, but they now want to hear regularly measurable and verifiable steps to improve the situation.
He stated that the alarm raised by the government about the bad state of the nation’s 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,” Obi said.