N46tr Debt Awaits Buhari’s Successor — DMO
With the energy, hope and enthusiasm deployed by political office seekers in the ongoing campaigns ahead of the 2023 general elections, sober-minded observers may be tempted to wonder if any of them has taken time to check the country’s and their respective states’ balance sheets.
The office seekers particularly the leading presidential candidates promise wealth, prosperity and economic stability. It happens that party politicking in this clime is more about emotion and base sentiments rather than shrewd economic sense, especially on the part of the voters. Few, if any, ask critical questions as to what resources the office seekers base their projections on.>>>>>CONTINUE READING HERE>>>>>
Indeed, the public may need to pay more attention to figures coming from the Debt Management Office (DMO), since June to moderate the hopes of any elected officer from 2023.
Patience Oniha, Director General (DG), DMO, has made no pretences about how neck deep the country is in debt. Put in a clear illustrative term, Nigeria, with its debt situation, has become like the novel character, ‘Unoka’, sire to the famous ‘Okonkwo’ in Chinua Achebe’s all-time best seller and iconic book, Things Fall Apart.
Unoka owes and owes with no means of either paying back or making good use of the money borrowed. Where agile men cross rivers and forests to seek virgin lands to farm, the novel character, like Nigeria, relies on nearby, cultivated and tired lands, pretty much like Nigeria over-relying on wasting oil assets.
“Nigeria simply has to learn to produce and export if the borrowing must stop,” explains Ishaq Ismael, an economist working for the financial institution in Ilorin.
According to the summary from DMO, total public debt stock in June is at N42.84, trillion, up from N41.60tn as of March 2022, an increase of N1.24tn in just three months. Ceteris paribus, as the economic wonks say, means if all things remain equal if the country manages to get more indebted by N1.24 trillion every three months.
