By Moshood Oshunfurewa

There is a certain tragedy in watching a nation articulate its own contradictions in public. On one hand, the Debt Management Office tells us Nigeria’s total public debt stood at N159.35 trillion as of March 2026. On the other, the Federal Government insists that borrowings under President Bola Tinubu are “nowhere near” the N80 trillion being bandied about by commentators. The diagnosis is correct – Nigeria has a debt problem. The prescription, however, is the same old evasion: blame the naira, blame accounting adjustments, blame everyone except the architects of this fiscal catastrophe.

Between December 2025 and March 2026, Nigeria’s total public debt remained almost static at about N159 trillion. But the composition changed. Domestic debt increased by N2.55 trillion to N87.40 trillion, while external debt declined in naira terms by N2.48 trillion. The government would have us believe this is progress, less foreign borrowing, more domestic borrowing. But this is not a victory; it is a redistribution of the same poison. Domestic debt now accounts for 54.85 percent of the total portfolio. Every naira the government borrows domestically is a naira that Nigerian banks cannot lend to manufacturers or small businesses. We are cannibalising our own private sector to feed a government that cannot stop spending what it does not have.

The question is not whether Nigeria can afford to stop borrowing. The question is what the borrowed money is used for. And here, the answer is damning. In the first nine months of 2025, the Tinubu government borrowed N11.89 trillion, exceeding its own planned borrowing target of N10.34 trillion by approximately N1.54 trillion. Of that staggering sum, only N3.10 trillion was allocated to capital expenditure, a mere 17.66 percent of the N17.58 trillion earmarked for capital projects. This means 82.34 percent of planned capital expenditure went unfunded. Nigerians are right to ask: where did the balance go? Was it deployed for recurrent expenditure? For the entertainment of guests at Aso Rock? Transferred to the Renewed Hope Agenda 2027 election campaign fund? The government has offered no explanation. Silence, in this context, is not golden. It is complicity.

Borrowing is not inherently destructive. If the money builds roads, power projects, agricultural infrastructure and other assets that help the economy grow, borrowing can be useful. But we are borrowing to survive, not to build. Debt servicing swallowed 67 percent of federal revenue in the first nine months of 2025. For every N100 earned by the government, over N67 went to creditors. President Tinubu himself disclosed that Nigeria will spend approximately $11.6 billion servicing debt in 2026, nearly half of the country’s projected revenue for the entire year. This is not development financing. This is deferred poverty. And yet, despite these numbers, the government continues to borrow as if there is no tomorrow. On March 31, 2026, President Tinubu sent a letter to the National Assembly asking for permission to borrow $6 billion from abroad. The request arrived wrapped in the usual language of fiscal responsibility and infrastructure priorities. Lawmakers will debate it, amend a clause or two, and approve it. This is how it always goes.

What the letter did not say, because no government letter ever says it, is that Nigeria’s total public debt had just crossed N159 trillion. Or that four years earlier, the entire debt stock was N33.13 trillion. In four years, the number grew by 380 percent. Not 38 percent. Not 138 percent. Three hundred and eighty percent.

The tragedy deepens when we consider the scale of waste and corruption that accompanies this borrowing. The Peoples Redemption Party has accused the government of mismanaging borrowed funds, alleging that many loans are diverted through corruption and a lack of accountability. Rather than improving infrastructure or boosting social investments, funds are often funnelled into frivolous projects and opaque contracts. Nigeria loses approximately $18 billion annually to procurement fraud, equivalent to 3.8 percent of its GDP. The EFCC and the Bureau of Public Procurement have both stated that over 90 percent of corruption perpetrated in Nigeria is through procurement. This is not a leak; it is a flood. 

The government’s response to criticism has been characteristically evasive. When reports emerged that the Tinubu administration had borrowed about N80 trillion in three years, the finance minister, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, dismissed the figure as exaggerated, blaming naira depreciation and accounting adjustments. The depreciation of the naira, we are told, added more than N40 trillion to the debt stock without any new borrowing. This is a convenient fiction. Even if we accept this accounting sleight of hand, the reality remains: Nigeria is deeper in debt than at any point in its history, and the quality of life for ordinary Nigerians has never been worse. As of 2025, 63 percent of Nigerians, some 140 million souls, wallow in poverty. More than 27 million face food insecurity. The United Nations World Food Programme warned: “Never before have there been so many people in Nigeria without food.”

The IMF declared that Nigeria’s economic reforms are “working.” Working for whom? Certainly not for the Nigerian people. When a bag of rice costs more than a civil servant’s monthly salary, when ladies and mothers trade their dignity for a cup of garri, when the “Hunger Protests” of August 2024 were suppressed with bullets, killing at least 24 and arresting over a thousand, these are not signs of a working economy. These are signs of a nation in collapse. The government’s latest defence is that it is merely servicing debts inherited from previous administrations. This is both true and misleading. Yes, debt was inherited. But the current administration has added significantly to it. The Tinubu administration alone has accumulated N71.82 trillion of the current total since May 2023, accounting for 45 percent of the total public debt stock in barely two years of governance. When President Buhari left office, Nigeria’s debt was N87.38 trillion. It has nearly doubled since.

There is a word for borrowing money, failing to deploy it productively, watching it disappear through corruption, and then blaming accounting adjustments when challenged. That word is not governance. It is not fiscal responsibility. It is not even incompetence. It is betrayal. The solution is not complicated. It requires political will, something that has been conspicuously absent. Nigeria does not lack the means to fund its development. The Federal Inland Revenue Service generated N21.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing its target by over 11 percent. 

The Nigeria Customs Service recorded a 90 percent increase in revenue collection, bringing in N6.1 trillion. These numbers prove that Nigeria has the capacity to finance its development from domestic sources, if only there were stronger political will and financial discipline. But discipline requires accountability. Accountability requires transparency. Transparency requires telling Nigerians the truth about where their money is going. And on that front, this government has failed utterly.

We are not asking Nigeria to stop borrowing entirely. We are asking for something far more modest: that the borrowed money be used for what it was borrowed for. That roads be built. That power be generated. That hospitals be equipped. That children be fed. That the trillions of naira borrowed in the name of the Nigerian people actually reach the Nigerian people. Until that happens, every new loan is not a lifeline. It is a noose. And every government denial is not a clarification. It is a confession.

*Oshunfurewa, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.