Edo APC Attacks Obaseki for Commenting on Nigeria’s Economy

Edo APC Attacks Obaseki for Commenting on Nigeria’s Economy; they claim his comments are false, wicked, and very unnecessary.

Col. David Imuse (rtd), the chairman of the Caretaker Committee of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Edo State, described the allegation by Governor Godwin Obaseki regarding Nigeria’s economy as  “spurious, alarmist, untrue and wicked.”

the chairman in a recent statement by Victor Osehobo, the Edo APC assistant publicity secretary, also stated that the governor’s comments were laughable, unnecessary, and uninvestigated claims.

These comments are based on the comments Governor Obaseki made last week stating that the country’s economic situation is more critical now because of the huge amount borrowed to service it. He also added that the situation is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

He further stated that the real issue is that under Governor Obaseki’s watch, the economy of Edo State is facing a lot of difficulties, and the governor ignorant of ideas about how to fix the problem.

With a foreign debt of $300million and a domestic debt including loans from commercial banks, the capital market, and other doubtful sources, approaching N120billion as of March this year, for projects that don’t exist, the Governor has more issues to deal with.

According to the Edo APC chairman, in the past seven months, Governor Obaseki has plunged Edo State into bigger debts by taking more loans which have led to a 67 percent increase in its debt profile. Under Governor Obaseki, Edo State has overtaken Rivers State as the state with the highest foreign and domestic debt in the South-South part of Nigeria and is on a steady course to replace Lagos as the state that has the most debt in Nigeria.

Col Imuse further expressed that  Edo State now spends more money repairing debts than on education, healthcare, and infrastructure without a state cabinet and an aged public service, whereas other states are working seriously towards reducing the burden of debt on their citizens.

Some state governments had started working on the reduction of their domestic debts towards the end of September 2020 according to the Debt Management Office which lists the Kogi State government as having reduced the state debt from a cumulative N132.5 to N73, 314,904,696.35 as of December 31st, 2019.

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