The Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed has said the postulations of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar on the status of Nigeria’s debt are not worthy of the paper it was written on.
Atiku, who was the presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 presidential election, had on Tuesday berated the federal government for its endless borrowing, saying the economy was on the brink of collapse.
But the federal government, through Minister Lai Mohammed on Wednesday said Atiku’s position was nothing but scaremongering anchored on a false premise.
”There is no doubt that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar loves our country and wishes it well, otherwise he would not have sustained his serial quest for the country’s highest position. One can only hope
that his resort to the use of such words as ‘precipice’, ‘foreclosure’ and ‘economic ruin’ does not reflect anything but best wishes for the country at this time,” the Minister stated.
He said the figure of Nigeria’s debt to revenue ratio of
99% in the first quarter of 2020, quoted by the former Vice President, is not in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, where he claimed he got it from.
”We are also not able to ascertain the source of the first quarter figures of N943.12 billion for debt servicing and N950.56 billion for retained revenue, which he also quoted,” he said..
According to Mohammed, the debt service provisions in the annual budgets include principal repayments, interest payments and all other applicable charges, adding:
”Therefore, the statement that debt servicing does not equate to debt repayment is not only wrong, but
ill-informed,” he said.
