Former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, said leadership should be about leaving a place better than a leader met it. He said as president, between 1999-2007, he met Nigeria in debt trap but left it in economic heaven.
Without equivocation, former president Obasanjo, the first president of Nigeria’s fourth republic, said when he assumed office as president in 1999 from the military government of Abdulsalami Abubakar, the country was spending $3.5 billion in debt servicing yearly. He said despite the amount, the debt was not going down.
Obasanjo, speaking in Abeokuta, on Tuesday, June 18, at the Safe Online Youth Fellowship Bootcamp organized by NerdzFactory Company, supported by Meta at the Youth Development Centre, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), said he made sure Nigeria did not just get debt relief from the creditors but left a viable economy with good balance sheet for the succeeding administration.
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Obasanjo said, “When I came in as elected President, I wanted to get debt relief because we were spending $3.5 billion every year servicing debt and the quantum of the debt was not going down. Today, I can say that I made Nigeria better than I found it from an economic perspective.”
Giving details on the debt he met and the amount in left in the country’s reserve, he said, “I found $3.7 billion in the reserves and we were spending $3.5 billion to service our debt.
He added, “By the time I left, we had a debt of about $36 billion with the debt relief, and I left with a debt of $3.6 billion.”
The former president further disclosed, ‘Also, I left a reserve of over $50 billion. I also achieved excess crude for the country worth over $25 billion.”
Obasanjo advised corps members to take nation building very serious. He emphasized that youths have a great role to play in nation building.
The former president called for more investment in education. He said only education could equip the citizens with necessary tools for nation building.
