It is imperative that the Federal Government reveal to the public the assets and deficits they inherited from the previous administration to ensure transparency and accountability.
This is the view of the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi.
The former Anambra state governor gave this call on his official X handle in a series of posts on Thursday and in reaction to National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu's claim on Monday that the current administration was left a bankrupt country by the previous administration.
According to Obi, the previous APC administration equally made the same claim of inheriting debts.
"One major characteristic of responsible governance is transparency and strict accountability", said Obi.
He added: "This demands that the government disclose exactly the degree of deficit they inherited. What is inherited should be disclosed to enable the public to know where we are and where we are headed.
"Recall that the previous APC Government made a similar claim in 2015 against the PDP administration that handed over to them without telling the nation what it actually inherited.
"Rather, they took our debt profile from N12.6 Trillion in 2015 to N87 trillion in 2023 when they left office without improving on any indices of development: Education, Health, Poverty eradication, and Security."
Obi further criticized the government's stand on the country's current financial state which he believes raises more questions about the recently signed supplementary budget.
"The alarm raised by the government about the bad state of our finances raises questions about the rationale behind some expenditure items in the supplementary budget recently signed into law.
"The present revelation also goes to buttress the argument that I have made since electioneering season that the cost of governance is too high and must be drastically reduced. A bankrupt country should channel every available resource into funding critical development sectors", he said.
