The Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has described Nigeria as technically bankrupt.
Obaseki added that the Federal Government was “stuck in the past” and needed to restructure the country for progress.
The governor made this statement during a one-on-one interview on the Channels Television programme Politics Today on Thursday evening.
Obaseki explained that the country neither had enough nor earned enough to cover its expenditure, adding that government spending was also not decreasing.
He stated that the government must ensure that individual states took advantage of economic opportunities, noting that the Federal Government could not continue to centrally manage resources.
“Nigeria is technically bankrupt. And I mean it. When you are bankrupt anywhere in the world, like in the United States, you file for what they call Chapter Eleven. You restructure your affairs so that you can reorganise and meet your obligations. Nigeria is not restructuring in that sense; it still behaves as if it had money like it used to.
“It (Nigeria) has been in trouble for a while. I won’t say insolvent, but technically so, in the sense that we don’t have enough to cover our expenditure, we are not reducing our expenditure, and we are not earning more.”
“First, the Federal Government does not have the capacity to manage the economy at the scale and in the way it is currently doing. You’re producing 1.3 million barrels of oil, right? Because you are trying to do it centrally. We have 147 oil wells in Edo, and only 53 or fewer are producing.”
“Unless you create a new design that allows the individual states to take advantage of the economic opportunities they have, stressing the assets of this country and paying what they need to pay to the central government, the federal government cannot sit and try to micromanage the country and its assets. It has shown that it cannot. It doesn’t have the capacity to do so,” he said.
He also expressed his belief that the Federal Government was stuck in the past, stating that the current structure of the country was outdated and that a new structure was needed to effectively manage the economy.
“I think for me, it’s 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 over the years.
“It’s not that the people there are not smart; it’s not that they’re stupid. It’s more that they just don’t have the courage to make the decisions they need to make.
“The problem with Nigeria today is structural. The structure we have is expired; it’s outdated. We need a new structure to run the economy of the state. If it doesn’t happen, we are not going anywhere,” Obaseki stated.