Nigeria’s Debt Crisis: Obasanjo Blasts Leadership Failures Since 2007

In a candid interview with News Central Television, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed grave concerns over Nigeria’s escalating debt crisis, highlighting the dramatic fiscal decline since he left office in 2007.

Obasanjo recounted his administration’s efforts to reduce the nation’s debt from nearly $36 billion to approximately $3.5 billion, a stark contrast to today’s financial landscape.

“When I came in 1999, we had a debt overhang of close to $36 billion,” Obasanjo stated. “By the time I left, with debt relief and clearing what we had to clear, the quantum of debt that I left was about $3.5 to $3.6 billion.”

Obasanjo emphasized the improvements made during his tenure, noting that the foreign reserves rose from a mere $3.7 billion to an impressive $45 billion.

Additionally, he revealed that the government accumulated about $25 billion in an “Excess Crude” account—funds that were meant to bolster the economy beyond its regular budgetary allocations.

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“Now, the point is that I left in 2007. Today, between 2007 and 2024, all that amount of money has gone; all of it,” he lamented. “Not only that, but all the money they made all that period had gone. And today, we owe more than we owed when we came to government in 1999.”

The former president criticized the current leadership, pointing to what he described as a “poor quality of leadership” that has contributed to the country’s current predicament.