The Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun on Thursday broke his silence on the debt profile of the State.
Amosun said, contrary to figures being bandied about the opposition, the state owes N103 billion comprising local and foreign debts.
The Governor disclosed this while addressing teachers at the Arcade ground, Oke-Mosan Governor’s Office, Abeokuta, the state capital during the 2017 edition of World’s Teachers Day.
He explained that the N103b debt included N48.9 billion inherited from his predecessor, Gbenga Daniel, and a foreign loan of about N40 billion incurred by the state since the days of Olabisi Onabanjo.
Amosun also justified the recent loan request of $350 from the World Bank, saying it is only rational to take the loan at 1% interest rate in the interest of state development.
According to him, in a manner akin to the experience of Lagos and Edo states, the loan would be beneficial to his successors as his administration may not access over 10% of the loan before its expiration.
Amosun said: “clearly, every debt is about 103 billion including foreign and local. Even if you take the foreign loan which was about 40 billion, I didn’t take the loan, our forebears did.
“If those ones are grants with 0.5%, they are just like ‘dash’, when people are shouting that we are taking loans, World Bank is not stupid, what they probably have is $1billion and they are giving Ogun State alone 35% of that, $350m dollars at 1% or 1.5%.
“That money is because of love we have for Ogun State, if not, I would have stopped the loan because of these talks, but this is the time, I will not be the administration that will collect this money, at best, we will be given 10% next years because world bank has procedures.
“Officially, Ogun State is owing little over 70billion, the one that is local that can be ascribed to this administration. How can anybody that is rational see a loan of 1% and you’re saying ‘don’t take’, they clearly do not know, and you can’t give what you don’t have.
“My predecessor officially said they left N49.8 billion dollars, that was what was left in the handover note if all that we’ve added to it is about $20 billion, can’t you see what we’ve done?”
He reiterated that he opted to repay the bailout facility for 10 years as against 20 years proposed by the Federal Government because of his financial re-engineering in the state.