Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki has said Nigeria is technically bankrupt.
Obaseki made the remarks during an interview on Channels Television's Politics Today programme on Thursday evening.
He explained that the country does not have enough money to cover its expenses and added that government spending is not decreasing either.
According to him,
“Nigeria is technically bankrupt. And I mean that. When someone is bankrupt anywhere in the world, like in the United States, they file for what they call Chapter Eleven. They restructure their affairs so that they can reorganize and meet their obligations. Nigeria is not restructuring in that sense; it is still behaving as if it has money, as it did before.
“Nigeria has been in trouble for some time. I won’t say it’s insolvent, but technically it is, in the sense that we don’t have enough to cover our expenses, we’re not reducing our expenses and we’re not earning more.”
“First of all, the Federal Government does not have the capacity to manage the economy on the scale and in the way that it is currently doing it. They are producing 1.3 million barrels of oil, aren’t they? Because they are trying to do it in a centralized manner. We have 147 oil wells in Edo, and only 53 or less are producing.”
“Unless a new design is created that allows individual states to take advantage of the economic opportunities that they have, by emphasizing the assets of this country and paying what they should pay to the central government, the federal government cannot sit back and try to micromanage the country and its assets. It has proven that it cannot do it. It does not have the capacity to do it,” he said.
He also expressed his belief that the Federal Government was stuck in the past, stating that the country's current structure was outdated and that a new structure was needed to effectively manage the economy.
“I think to me it feels like this federal government is stuck in the past, because you can't solve a wicked problem using the same tools that have been used over the years.
“It's not that the people there aren't intelligent, nor are they stupid. It's more that they simply don't have the courage to make the decisions they need to make.
“The problem in Nigeria today is structural. The structure we have is outdated, obsolete. We need a new structure to manage the economy of the state. If it is not put in place, we will go nowhere.”
