Nigeria borrowing to save Jobs - Minister of Finance

Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun has said the Nigerian government was forced to borrow more money from international bodies so as to protect people from losing their jobs. Adeosun, who spoke at the recently concluded 2017 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group Annual Meetings in Washington D.C, said that with Nigeria being in deep financial mess, the country had to borrow money or sack a lot of people from public service. She said: “We felt that laying-off thousands of persons was not the best way to stimulate growth. Also, when we came into office, about 27 states could not pay salary. If we had allowed that situation to persist, we would have been in depression by now. So, we took the view as a government that the best thing to do was to stimulate growth and spend our way out of trouble, get the state governments to pay salaries, making sure that the federal government pays and invests in capital infrastructure."