By
Tonye Barcanista
There was a time we had responsible governments in Nigeria.
The Obasanjo/Atiku administration reduced Nigeria’s foreign debt from $28 billion to $2.11 billion, built 10 power plants, paid N2.5 trillion pension debt. The administration left $33.7 billion in foreign reserve and $9.43 in Excess Crude Account (from $0) when they were leaving.
The Umaru Musa/Jonathan administration further improved the Foreign Reserves to $40 billion, and improved the Excess Crude Account to $22 billion . At the peak of global financial meltdown in 2008, Yar’adua administration put $1 billion into the economy from the ECA – Nigeria didn’t feel the impact of the meltdown. He managed to keep foreign debt at $3.5 billion.
Jonathan/Sambo administration managed to keep the Excess Crude Account at $2.2 billion (actually the National Assembly and Governors pressured the government to share $18 billion from it. Jonathan however left Nigeria’s reserve at $28.6 billion. He maintained external debt at $7.3 billion.
During these three administrations, Minimum wage was worth it. The Dollar traded between 110-199/$, and Nigerians were ranked 23rd most happiest in the world (2010 ranking), and consistently ranked 1st-2nd in Africa for almost two decades.
These were the glorious period of Nigeria under successive PDP administrations.
APC took over power in 2015:
External Debt: $41.59bn (as at September 2023) from $7 billion inherited from PDP
Excess Crude Account: $473,754 (as at September 2023) from $2.2 billion inherited in 2015.
Dollar/Naira Exchange ~1500/$
In addition to these poor indices, Nigerians that were once ranked 23rd happiest in the world was ranked 115th in the world in 2022. This is even more true considering that several Nigerians have committed suicide as a result of the hard times since the last nine years.
The only way to get Nigeria working again is by returning PDP to power in 2027. There is no two ways about this!
Tonye Barcanista
