Former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the last election, Atiku Abubakar’s comments on the country’s debt profile is a clear example of a person dabbling in a matter beyond his pay grade.
The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) said in a statement that it is obvious from the manner he jumped on a statement “Nigeria’s Total Public Debt Portfolio as at March 31 2019”, released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) that Atiku only wanted to make political gains without fully digesting the document.
In the statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO said that Atiku Abubakar has again shown that he lacks a basic understanding of economics and governance despite spending eight years as a Vice President.
“People who understand basic economics would tell you that at 19% of GDP, Nigeria’s borrowing is quite low when compared to countries like South Africa, Brazil, Ghana and Angola but Atiku Abubakar is opting to play to the gallery with beer parlour analysis couched in flowery language.
“It is even a far cry from the 25% debt-to-GDP benchmark set by the Nigerian authorities.
“One other thing that the former VP showed little understanding of is the difference between public and federal government debt.
“The debt stock document noted that the federal government owes N13.1 tn domestically, while the states and the FCT owe N3.97 tn but this means nothing to an opposition element that needs to hang on to any straw to be on the front pages of the media.
“We know for a fact that Nigeria has long passed the era where she had to borrow to pay salaries, as former Finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala attested to in 2014. That was a period the country was earning so much as a result of higher crude oil prices but racked up an external debt stock of $63bn (about N12.5trn).
“It is instructive that Atiku alluded to the debt relief Nigeria got in 2006 which he surreptitiously claimed credit for but he also needs to be reminded, in case he forgot, that Nigeria earned approximately N87tn between 1999 and 2015 yet his party left behind a debt stock as high as almost $70bn and a country with major infrastructure deficit that a government that is earning far less is working hard to plug.
“In fact, the country earned N51tn in the four-year period from 2010 to 2015 but the then Jonathan administration cannot point at a 100-kilometre motorable road or a fully completed infrastructural project that was handed over to the Buhari government.
“And by attacking one of President Buhari’s social welfare schemes, Trader Moni, in his ill-conceived criticism, Atiku has once again shown his disdain for the Nigerian masses. How could an individual that has tried, thrice but failed, to be President be so scornful of a group of people whom this administration is working so hard to lift out of a poverty threshold that successive PDP administrations literally forced them into?
“Here is an initiative that is part of a larger National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP) that is set to touch the lives of more than twelve million people in virtually all the states of the federation and the FCT.
“In reality, Atiku’s repeated tirade against SIP initiatives should not come as a surprise to many people because the former Vice President is part of an exclusive category of ‘nouveau riche’ who used their privileged positions to amass wealth,” the pro-Buhari group added.
BMO is also critical of a reference to the Buhari administration as a junta in the statement.
It said: “How could a former Vice President endorse a document that described the President as General Buhari and the administration as a junta?
“Is he dismissing the 15 million votes that President Buhari secured in the February 2019 election as inconsequential? And does he not realise that there is a National Assembly which is seen as a symbol of democracy in place?
“But whatever he thinks about the President or his government, we need to again remind him that he lost the election by a margin that is more than the combined population of Gambia. Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde.”