Nigeria Is Technically Bankrupt – Obaseki

The Governor of Edo State, Mr  Godwin Obaseki, has said Nigeria is technically bankrupt.

He explained that the country is technically bankrupt because it does not have enough to cover its expenditure and the leaders are not reducing the country’s expenditure and the country is not earning more revenue.

This was as he stated that there is a need to restructure the country.

He spoke on Thursday during a special edition of Politics Today on Channels TV tagged: ‘One-On-One With Godwin Obaseki.’

He said: “Nigeria is technically bankrupt. When you are bankrupt like in the United States, you fill for Chapter 11. You restructure your assets so that you can reorganize and meet your obligations. Nigeria is not restructuring itself. It is still behaving as if it had money that it can use.

“Nigeria has been in trouble (financially) for a long time. I will not say the country is insolvent. Nigeria is technically bankrupt in the sense that we do not have enough to cover our expenditure and we are not reducing our expenditure and we are not earning more. Nigeria does not have the capacity anymore to run the economy on the scale we are doing today.

“We need to create a new design where the different parts of this country should go and take advantage of the economic opportunities they have and make the different parts to pay what they need to pay to the Central Government.

“But for the central government to say that I am trying to micro-manage the country and the assets of the country, is just showing that they do not have the capacity to manage the country.”

He added: “It is like this federal government is stuck and stuck in the past because you cannot resolve a malignant problem using the same tools you have used through the years.

“It is not that the people there are not smart, it is not that they are stupid. It is more that they do not have the courage to take some of the decisions that they need to be taken.

“The problem of Nigeria today is structural. The structure we have is expired, outdated. We need a new structure to run the economy of this state.

“If restructuring does not happen, we are just wasting time, we are not going to move forward.”