Ahmed Joda, the Chairman of the Transition Committee formed by President Muhammadu Buhari to facilitate the transfer of power from the Jonathan administration, has said that the former President left a debt of N7 trillion.
This number is a contradiction from of the administration’s officials claim that Nigeria’s debt was N1.3 million.
Before the handover, Yemi Osinbanjo, the Vice-President, said that the new government would inherit a debt of $63 billion.
In opposition to this statement, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Minister of Finance, said, in defence of Jonathan, that the previous administration only received a debt of $21.8 billion. Okonjo-Iweala said that the $63.7 billion Osinbajo alluded to includes different loans taken on by many governments since 1960.
She claims that the debts Jonathan sustained were in part $18 billion domestic component and $3.7 billion external component. She went on to say that the large jump in debt from 2012 – 2015 was a result of 53% wage increase that was executed by the Yar’Adua administration.
However, Joda’s words on Sunday produced even different numbers: “We were told at the beginning of the exercise that the government was in deficit of at least N1.3 trillion and by the end people were talking about N7 trillion; everything is in a mess and these things have to be fixed.”
The former Federal Permanent Secretary said, “I often wondered, since the beginning of this exercise, if the PDP and President Jonathan had won the election what would have been the fate of Nigeria.”
