Ahmed Joda, the Chairman of the transition committee put in
place by President Muhammadu Buhari to interface with the former administration
of President Goodluck Jonathan for a smooth handover of power on May 29, has
stated that the former president left behind a N7 trillion liability.
This figure contradicts claims by officials of the administration
that the country’s debt profile stood at N1.3 trillion.
Mr. Joda made the disclosure in an interview he granted the
Daily Trust newspaper, published on Sunday.
Mr. Buhari’s deputy, Yemi Osinbanjo, had said shortly before the
handover of power that the new government would be inheriting a debt of $63
billion.
However, the former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
promptly rose to the defence of Mr. Jonathan’s administration, saying of the
$63 billion debt, the administration only incurred $21.8 billion.
She also said the $63.7 billion cited by Mr. Osinbajo included
multilateral and domestic loans by successive federal and state governments
since 1960.
Speaking on Sunday, however, Mr. Joda said, “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 state of collapse.
“The civil service is bloated and the military and police, if
you are a Nigerian, you know what they have been facing for a long time;
everywhere is in a mess and these things have to be fixed”.
The former Federal Permanent Secretary said he had always
wondered what would have been the fate of the country had Mr. Jonathan and his
party, the Peoples Democratic Party, returned to power.
He 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. It would have been more difficult for them to
face the challenge because they had been telling people that everything was
good; the roads are good.
“They were not talking about the absence of light in the house,
but they were talking about the capacity to produce electricity is 12,000
megawatts out of which only 5,000 could be released. But even out of this 5,000
at the time they were doing the handing over notes only 1,300 megawatts were
being generated, but they were talking about 35,000 kilometers of distribution
lines and so on, but nobody told us the real problem – that there is no gas, or
there is no capacity to transmit the electricity that could be generated; that
even when it is delivered at the point of distribution the distribution system
is so weak that it can’t take it.”
Mr. Joda further said, “if they came back, they couldn’t wake up
in the morning and say we can’t pay salaries, we couldn’t do this or even pay
contractors and might even not be able to pay pensions and gratuities or
finance any of our operations”.
In defence of Mr. Jonathan, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala had stated that it
was wrong to blame Mr. Jonathan’s administration for the huge debt stock which
she said was accumulated over a long period of time by successive
administrations.
She said the debts incurred under the Jonathan government were
made up of $18 billion domestic component and $3.7 billion external component.
She added that between 2007 and 2011, a debt of $17.3 billion
was recorded while between 2012 and 2015, the debt incurred stood at $18.1
billion.
She had further explained that the leap in the debt profile
between 2012 and 2015 was triggered by the 53 per cent wage increase
implemented by the late Umaru Yar’Adua administration.