Nigeria doesn’t have a debt problem - Finance minister

Nigeria does not have a debt problem, rather a revenue problem, says the minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed. The minister made the disclosure on Monday, August 26 while speaking with management staff of the ministry of budget and national planning, The Cable reports. Legit.ng gathers that Ahmed said Nigeria’s debt is not too high and that the federal government is looking at increasing revenue performance from 55 percent to 85 percent She said: “I want to restate that our debt is not too high; what we have is a revenue problem. “Our debt is still very much within a reasonable fiscal limit. In7n fact, amongst our comparative countries, we are the least in terms of borrowing. “If we don’t do that, we will continue to suffer significantly in our capacity to service the national budget.” The management staff were further informed by the minister, that there’ll be consequences for non-performance and they had their work cut out. She said: “It is a very big work that Mr President has given to us. It is not myself and the minister of state that will do the work; it is you that will do it. All we are providing is leadership and the enabling environment for you to deliver on the task. “Within this week, we will be getting our directives on what we need to achieve. We are going to sign up on these directives and we are going to be held responsible for the delivery of the directives. “There will be consequences, not just on the ministers but on the permanent secretaries and the directors.” Afe Babalola makes stunning revelation, says DSS not empowered by law to arrest Nigeria’s debt profile stood at N24.387tn as at December 2018; up from N21.752tn in 2017. Also, in three years alone, the country’s external debt rose to $11.77bn. Meanwhile,former vice president Atiku Abubakar declared that the country would have spent N2.5 trillion on debt-servicing by the end of 2019, a figure which he said was more than the country’s capital budget. Atiku, in a statement by his media aide, Paul Ibe, warned that the deeper the country goes into unsustainable debt, the more she loses its independence to her creditors. He called for immediate action to address Nigeria’s unsustainable debt burden as he said the National Economic Council (NEC) which he chaired in 2006 paid off the country's entire debt under the leadership of former president Olusegun Obasanjo.