The Federal Government has accused VP elect, Pastor Yemi Osinbajo of lying about the government's debt profile. 

Osinbajo had last week claimed that the Goodluck Jonathan administration incurred $60billion debt during his tenure. According to NIGERIAN PILOT, reacting on behalf of the FG, Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in an interactive session with finance correspondents in Abuja over the weekend, said that the Jonathan administration ''is leaving positive economic legacies behind which nobody can wish away because history cannot be rewritten''.

Okonjo-Iweala said that it is wrong ''to characterize the Jonathan administration as leaving $63 billion debt'' because the country’s debt stock was accumulated over a long time by several administrations. According to her, the country’s current debt goes as far back as 1960 and that it includes Federal Government debt as well as states debt.

''All the borrowings (external) were borrowed under concessionary terms with long moratorium payments and these date back to 1960; so no $60billion is accumulated by this administration. In fact, this government retired N75billion bond maturity for the first time in this country. There was 53 percent increase in salary in 2010 and government had to weather such an increment which the money was not there and they had to borrow to make up the salary increment. To characterise this administration as leaving $60billion debt is not correct''.

''Nigerians will remember in history that the difficulty of 2015 is because of the 50% fall in oil prices'', Okonjo-Iweala said.