By Olabode Opeseitan
…….A fact grounded examination of what Nigeria owes, what it has paid, and who is profiting from the confusion….
In Nigeria, the agbada, that magnificent, wide flowing gown, can signal wisdom or conceal mischief depending on the wearer. It can be the costume of authority just as it can be the costume of performance. When some Nigerians recently stormed the World Bank's social media pages to beg the institution not to lend their government another dollar, they wore their outrage like an agbada. It was voluminous, eye catching, and concealing everything underneath. Underneath, in this case, was the inconvenient architecture of facts.
The Debt Is Not Tinubu’s Invention
Nigeria’s public debt did not begin in 2023. It did not begin in 2015. It is the accumulated ledger of decades, a long record of ambition, mismanagement, reform, relapse, and the stubborn arithmetic of a state that has often wanted Scandinavian outcomes on a West African tax base.
When President Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023, the Debt Management Office reported a total public debt of ₦87.38 trillion in the second quarter of that year. By December 2025, the figure stood at ₦159.28 trillion. The naira number is dramatic at first glance, yet the drama is largely a currency story. At the CBN’s official rate of ₦1,435.26 to the dollar, the 2025 figure translates to $110.97 billion, which is lower than the $114.35 billion equivalent recorded in mid 2023. Nigeria’s dollar debt stock fell even as the naira figure rose.
More revealing is the structure. External debt, the portion that must be repaid in foreign currency, declined as a share of total debt from 48.59 percent in December 2024 to 46.73 percent in December 2025. The government had shifted borrowing toward the domestic market, reducing exposure to exchange rate shocks. It was not a headline friendly reform, but it was a prudent one.
What Tinubu Inherited, and What He Has Cleared
Tinubu’s earliest public comments on Nigeria’s fiscal position were not triumphant. They were blunt. In August 2023, he asked whether a nation could continue to service external debts with ninety percent of its revenue. It was a rhetorical question with a grim answer. Eighteen months later, the debt service to revenue ratio had fallen to sixty five percent. It was still high, but it was no longer catastrophic.
Then came the clearances. They were quiet, unglamorous, and largely ignored by the loudest voices in the public square.
Nigeria completed repayment of a $3.4 billion IMF Rapid Financing Instrument in 2025, formally exiting the Fund’s debtor list. The government approved a ₦3.3 trillion plan to settle longstanding power sector obligations that had strangled investment for years. Foreign airline funds that had been trapped in the country were cleared, restoring confidence in Nigeria as an aviation market. In October 2025, ₦2.3 billion was released to settle salary and promotion arrears owed to university lecturers.
While debts were being paid, reserves were being rebuilt. Nigeria’s net foreign exchange reserves had fallen to $3.99 billion in 2023. By December 2025, they had risen to $34.8 billion. Gross reserves reached $50.45 billion in February 2026, the highest level in thirteen years. The increase in net reserves represented a rise of more than seven hundred and seventy percent. A country rebuilding its external buffers at that pace is not a country in fiscal freefall.
The World’s Topmost Borrowers
Before another argument is made about Nigeria’s $1.25 billion World Bank negotiation, it is worth recalling that borrowing is not a Nigerian anomaly. It is the operating system of the modern world.
The United States spent $970 billion servicing its national debt in the 2025 fiscal year. Japan’s public debt is more than twice its GDP. Italy’s exceeds 135 percent. France’s exceeds 110 percent. Nigeria’s debt to GDP ratio stands at roughly 39 percent, with the IMF projecting a decline to 30.1 percent by 2031.
The question is never whether a country borrows. The question is what it builds with the borrowing, and whether the investment generates enough growth to service the obligation.
The Tax Revolution Nobody Is Talking About
In 2025, Nigeria enacted four landmark tax reform laws. They dissolved the Federal Inland Revenue Service, created the Nigeria Revenue Service, harmonised revenue collection across federal and state tiers, and extended the digital tax net to virtual asset transactions.
The results arrived before the laws took full effect. Between January and September 2025, tax collections reached ₦22.59 trillion. Over the twenty four months from October 2023 to September 2025, collections totalled ₦47.39 trillion. Nigeria’s tax to GDP ratio, long stuck between nine and ten percent, began to rise structurally for the first time in years. It remains far below South Africa’s twenty three percent and the Sub Saharan African average of fifteen percent, yet the direction has finally shifted.
Building the Country
The Federal Ministry of Works reports that trillions of naira have been invested in critical road infrastructure since June 2023. Two hundred and sixty palliative road repairs have been completed. Four hundred and forty additional projects are ongoing. Twenty-nine legacy road initiatives are underway, including the Lagos Calabar Coastal Road and the Sokoto Badagry Highway. The Enugu Port Harcourt dual carriageway is nearing completion. The Lokoja Benin corridor has been relaunched and is more than halfway done. These are not press releases. They are visible to anyone who has driven the corridors.
Education spending has risen from ₦1.54 trillion in 2023 to ₦3.52 trillion in 2025. The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has disbursed ₦242.4 billion to more than 1.38 million students across 288 public tertiary institutions.
The investment goes well beyond loan disbursements. For the first time in twenty-five years, the Federal Government has revived technical and vocational education, committing ₦100 billion to a TVET package that covers free tuition, accommodation, feeding, and a monthly stipend of ₦22,500 per student. One hundred and sixty thousand engineers are being trained across 1,200 skills centres nationwide. In eighteen universities across all six geopolitical zones, the Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Incubation Certification programme is preparing graduates to create jobs rather than search for them. Eighteen medical schools were rehabilitated last year at approximately ₦12 billion each. This year, ₦250 billion has been budgeted for student hostel construction across federal tertiary institutions. These are not incremental adjustments. They are the architecture of a knowledge economy being assembled from the ground up.
Nigeria is also positioning itself in the global meetings and conventions industry, a market valued at more than one trillion dollars each year and dominated by cities that understand the economics of gathering. The country’s footprint is no longer theoretical. Akwa Ibom has built one of the most sophisticated convention ecosystems in West Africa, anchored by the Ibom Icon complex and a growing hospitality corridor. Lagos has expanded its event infrastructure around Victoria Island and Eko Atlantic. Abuja’s International Conference Centre has been renewed, while new facilities in Bauchi, Owerri and Port Harcourt are drawing regional conferences that once defaulted to Accra or Kigali. The transformation of Murtala Muhammed International Airport into a more efficient gateway is strengthening this momentum. Nigeria is not yet a global hub, but for the first time in a generation it is building the physical and logistical architecture required to compete.
The Architecture of Disruption
The $1.25 billion World Bank facility under negotiation, formally titled Nigeria Actions for Investment and Jobs Acceleration, is scheduled for Board consideration in June 2026. It is structured around economic reform, job creation, and industrial competitiveness. Since June 2023, the World Bank has approved approximately $9.35 billion for Nigeria across education, health, social protection, and infrastructure. These are not blank cheques. They are performance linked instruments monitored by one of the world’s most rigorous development finance institutions.
Some of those campaigning against this facility have opposed every action of the Tinubu administration from the first day. They have not acknowledged a road opened, a reserve rebuilt, an IMF debt cleared, or a student funded. Some have gone further. They have sabotaged infrastructure, sponsored unrest, and attempted to destabilise institutions. These are not concerned citizens. They are buccaneers who cloak their narrow ambitions in the agbada of civic virtue.
For the Genuine Patriot
To the millions of Nigerians whose pain is real and whose frustration is legitimate, the argument here is not that everything is well. It is that a state hollowed out over decades cannot be restored in thirty-six months. Structural reform is painful before it is productive. Burning the instruments of recovery in protest against hardship is the fastest route to deeper hardship.
A rise in net reserves from $3.99 billion to $34.8 billion. Gross reserves crossing $50 billion for the first time in thirteen years. Dollar denominated debt falling from $114.35 billion to $110.97 billion. A debt service ratio reduced from ninety seven percent to sixty five percent. A $3.4 billion IMF debt cleared. A ₦3.3 trillion power sector settlement approved. ₦47 trillion in tax collections over two years. More than ₦242 billion disbursed to 1.38 million students. A 128 percent increase in the education budget. These are not perfections. They are directions. And directions, sustained with discipline, become destinies.
If a protest is genuine, sincere, and rooted in patriotism, every honest Nigerian should stand beside it. If it is a coordinated campaign to truncate a nation’s progress while its architects position themselves to profit from its ruination, then clarity is a civic duty.
Olabode Opeseitan |
Editorial Architect |
Strategic Communications Professional |
Author
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