Past Nigerian presidents have been accused by the Nigerian Senate for the country’s current debt situation.
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Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan, according to Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, are to blame.
The debts accumulated between 1999 and 2015 were claimed by Adeola.
This was revealed by the congressman on Wednesday during a hearing on the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper for the years 2022-2024.
According to a statement signed by Ezrel Tabiowo, spokesman for Senate President Ahmad Lawan, Adeola revealed this when Lawan asked him to clarify concerns raised by lawmakers about Nigeria’s debt profile during deliberation on the report of the Joint Committees on Finance, Local and Foreign Debts, Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, and Petroleum Resources (
According to the legislator, “previous administrations dating back to the military era incurred a large part of Nigeria’s entire debt profile, roughly estimated at N33 trillion naira.”
“The majority of the loans currently being serviced by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration were accumulated between 1999 and 2015, from the time of the military to the PDP administration under Ex-Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan.
You’re implying that the debt you’re referring to is cumulative debt. It is not a borrowing by this government alone; it is a borrowing that dates back to the military era and the beginning of the Democratic era.
“It is an accumulated loan; it is not a loan indicating that President Buhari’s present administration has borrowed.
“It is a loan that the former administration — the Obasanjo, Jonathan, and Yar’Adua of the world – took out.
“And, because government business is a continuous process, the President of the day has no choice but to continue repaying all of the past administrations’ loans.
“More than three-quarters of the loans you’re seeing were taken from prior administrations, and we’re repaying them — we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, the right way.
“So, when my colleague indicated that we are paying for every 67 naira loan that was borrowed, he should know that more than 67 naira of it is loans borrowed by the previous administration. And that’s where we are right now.”