Peter Obi tackles Tinubu over claim of inheriting liabilities from Buhari

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has taken a swipe at President Bola Tinubu over his recent claim that his government inherited liabilities from his immediate predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari.

Speaking in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, last week, Tinubu said his administration “inherited serious liabilities” when it took over power from the last administration.

While reacting to Tinubu, Peter Obi, in a statement on Thursday, queried the Nigerian president for failing to get details of what he inherited “which had qualified us for bankruptcy status.”

The statement reads, “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. However, the report 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 let the public know where we are and where we are headed”.

He recalled that the previous APC government made a similar allegation in 2015 against the PDP administration that handed over to them without telling the nation what it inherited.

He said, “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 former Anambra State Governor said.

He argued that “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.”