Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday in Lagos expressed deep concern about Nigeria’s current debt profile.
Obasanjo, who was a keynote speaker at the “Why I am Alive” campaign celebration in Lagos on Friday, warned the Federal Government against “impending bankruptcy.”
Nigeria’s external debt, he said, grew by as much as 700 per cent to N24.947 trillion ($81.2.74 billion), from $10.32 billion in just four years (2015), meaning that the country would have to commit half of its foreign earnings to servicing its current level of indebtedness.
“Such a situation talks about impending bankruptcy,” the former president warned. He insisted that “no entity can survive while devoting 50 per cent of its revenue to debt servicing.”
He explained that the current budget out of which Nigeria spends 25 per cent to service debt “is not the country’s total earning; a lot of it is also borrowing. Simply put, we are borrowing to service what we have borrowed and yet we are borrowing more.
“I do not need the brain of any genius to conclude that those who use statistics to dig us deeper into debt are our enemies: statistics can be used to serve any purpose, and that is why Winston Churchill talked of lies, damn lies and statistics, meaning statistics can be made master of lies.”
Calling for national dialogue or debate on Nigeria’s short, medium and long-term plans as a nation, Obasanjo said his biggest worry was that, with the scale of debts the country was walking into, “there are already fiscal challenges to meet(ing) our obligations.”
Pastor Itua Ighodalo, who moderated the Friday session, said the campaign was “designed to empower young Nigerians for the future by tapping into the key lessons from success stories of eminent personalities that have contributed to the social, economic and political growth of Nigeria.”
