Recently, Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi stirred up controversies when he alleged that the money left behind by Former President Goodluck could not run Nigeria for three weeks. Amaechi said that in a bid to reinforce the fact that the economy was in very bad shape at the time President Muhammadu Buhari took over the baton of leadership in 2015....CONTINUE READING

But the former Rivers State Governor has been given a stern rebuke by some of Jonathan’s former aides, who have insisted that Amaechi was not saying the truth.

Of note is the reply by former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoke who insisted that Amaechi’s revelation was incorrect and accused the former River State Governor of playing politics with the truth. According to Chidoke, Jonathan handed over $500billion to Buhari at the time he stepped down from office.

He also noted that GEJ left behind over to Buhari $5.6billion Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Dividends and a 2015 budget of over N4trillion along with a total of $2.2billion in Excess Crude Oil Account.

Why was Jonathan borrowing to pay salaries?

A lot of people have been impressed by how Chidoka has responded to Amaechi with facts. But they have failed to ask Chidoka one salient question; which is ‘if Jonathan had $500billion in government coffers and all the other money mentioned, why was the administration borrowing to pay salaries?

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Of course, this is a fact that was revealed by no less a person than Jonathan’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister Okonjo Iweala.

In a May 2015 report in Premium Times, she revealed that the Federal Government borrowed about N500billion to pay salaries and fund the 2015 budget. Okonjo-Iweala said that the government resorted to borrowing as a result of a decline in oil revenue. This revelation by Okonjo-Iweala is in sharp contrast to the picture that Chidoka was trying to paint in his response to Amaechi’s remark.

Even though Amaechi may not have been 100 per cent accurate in what he said (politicians like to exaggerate the failures of their rivals) but things were not as rosy as the former Minister of Aviation wants us to believe. The economy was bleeding under Jonathan and the administration was desperately looking for funds to keep the government running.

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Another evidence that the economy under Jonathan was in a mess was the fact that from 2014 to May 2015 when Buhari took over the Gross Domestic Product was in constant decline. It was not until 2017 that Buhari was able to arrest the decline and the economy recorded its first quarterly growth since 2014.

Indeed, Amaechi was not far from the truth as GEJ handed over to Buhari an economy that was in terrible shape. But after seven years in power has Buhari been able to make the economy any better? That is a debate for another day.

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