Obasanjo decries Nigeria’s debt profile, demands fiscal prudence
Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has decried the size of debt being owned by the country, years after he left office in 2007.
The former president, who recalled he left the nation with about $70 billion, including a $45 billion reserve and $25 billion in a designated “excess crude” account, stressing that there is an utmost need for the government to show more prudence in spending.
The former President spoke on Thursday in an interview with Kayode Akintemi of News Central Television.
Obasanjo, who lamented the poor quality of leadership in the country, said his government met a debt overhang of close to $36 billion but reduced it to about $3.5 to $3.6 billion before leaving office in 2007.
He said, “I came in 1999 and met $3.7 billion in the reserve. And I have told you, we were spending $3.5 billion to service the debts. That’s what we had.
“By the time we left eight years later, with debt relief, when I came in, we had a debt overhang of close to $36 billion. By the time I left, with the debt relief and clearing what we had to clear, the quantum of debt that I left was about $3.5 to $3.6 billion from over or around $36 billion.
“At the same time, the reserve that was $3.7 billion when I came in went to $45 billion. At the same time, we had what we called ‘Excess crude’, which is what is more than what we budget and what we actually sell the crude. Normally, we are conservative in budgeting, we call it ‘Excess crude’. So, we had about $25 billion. When you add that to the reserve, we are talking about $70 billion.
“Now, the point is that I left in 2007. Today between 2007 and 2024, all that amount of money has gone; all of it. Not only that, but all the money they made that period had gone. And today, we owe more than we owed when we came to government in 1999.”
