Labour Party’s former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has sounded the alarm seriously about Nigeria’s rapidly evolving debt profile, condemning the country’s new borrowing trend as opaque and unsustainable. He noted this after the Senate recently approved additional external and domestic borrowings in the 2025-2026 budget.
The Senate on July 22, 2025, cleared the country’s external borrowings of $21 billion, €2.2 billion, and ¥15 billion, a domestic bond issue worth ₦750.98 billion and a €65 million grant. The loans are put at an estimated amount that will increase Nigeria’s total public debt from ₦149.39 trillion in the first half of 2025 to around ₦187 trillion. Obi warned that the amount could even reach over ₦200 trillion by the end of the year.
He noted that before the recent GDP rebasing, the country’s GDP stood at ₦269.2 trillion (about \$180 billion), meaning the government had already borrowed nearly 70% of that value. Even with the rebased GDP now at ₦372.8 trillion (around \$243.7 billion), he observed that the debt would still account for over 50% of the total GDP—an all-time high for Nigeria.
Obi chastised the federal government for failure to ensure that the huge borrowing is seen in real improvements in key sectors such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and national security. He cited statistics pointing to a year-on-year debt increase of ₦27.72 trillion and quarter-on-quarter increase of ₦4.72 trillion.
He argued that despite the escalated security spending—from ₦2.98 trillion in 2023 to ₦4.91 trillion in 2025—the country is still experiencing worsening insecurity. Within a period of two years, more than 10,000 individuals have been murdered and hundreds of villages overrun or abandoned.
Obi further pointed out inadequate infrastructure development, where only 60,000 km of the country’s 195,000 km roads are paved and the rest are in a terrible state. He emphasized that the national grid continues to provide less than 5,000 megawatts of power to more than 200 million Nigerians, illustrating the misalignment between borrowing and concrete development.
On the theme of poverty and human development, Obi cited statistics showing that 133 million Nigerians, or 63% of Nigerians, are presently multi-dimensionally poor. He also cited a Médecins Sans Frontières report to document rising malnutrition in northern Nigeria, where Katsina State alone recorded over 650 child deaths.
He cautioned that Nigeria’s vast resource bases continue to be jeopardized on the altar of below-optimal leadership and governance to rising poverty and inequality. While being amenable to the reality that borrowing is a useful tool of development, he maintained that such borrowing should be sustainable, devoid of obscurity, and aimed at clearly articulated, productive ends.
Obi campaigned on a restored policy-driven economic management, advocating for reduced government expenditure, containment of fiscal leakages, and increased investment in people. He appealed to policymakers to consider the long-term effects of their budgetary decisions and emphasize efficient, people-oriented development.
