The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, has challenged the Federal Government to disclose the nation’s incurred deficit by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration.
In a series of posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Thursday, Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, said Nigerians deserve to know and that governance is about “transparency and strict accountability”.
The National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, on Monday, had reportedly lamented that the Tinubu administration inherited a bankrupt country from the Buhari government.
According to him, the revenue generated by the Tinubu-led administration is being used to repay what was taken from the country.
Also, Tinubu, on Monday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, had said that his administration inherited serious liabilities but also assets from his predecessors.
Reacting, Obi said officials of the Tinubu government must “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.”
Obi said the previous APC government made a similar claim in 2015 against the previous administration.
“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.
