Goodluck Jonathan borrowed $3.8 billion in 5 years. Buhari borrowed $32.6 billion in 8 years. Tinubu has borrowed over $10 billion in less than 3 years, with another $24 billion still in the pipeline. That’s a total of $34 Billion in 3 years.
And the Senate just approved a fresh $516 million loan yesterday. For a road. That is the Sokoto-Badagry Super Highway, funded by Deutsche Bank, at an interest rate of SOFR plus 5.35% per annum. Nine years to repay. A road. While Nigerians cannot afford to eat.
But here is the part nobody is saying loudly enough. Jonathan and Buhari borrowed all that money, AND still paid fuel subsidy, AND still paid electricity subsidy.
Two governments. Combined debt of over $36 billion. And they were still subsidizing the pain of living in Nigeria. Still putting petrol at N165. Still keeping electricity tariffs low. Still absorbing the shock, so ordinary Nigerians could survive.
Then Tinubu came.
He told us the subsidies were the problem. He said the country was bleeding money. He removed the fuel subsidy on day one. He devalued the naira. He raised electricity tariffs by over 300%. He told us the pain was necessary. He told us to endure, that better days were coming.
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We endured.
Petrol went from N185 to over N1,300.
Electricity bills tripled overnight.
Food prices doubled, then tripled again.
Businesses closed. Jobs disappeared. Families broke apart.
And what did we get in return for all that sacrifice?
More borrowing. Faster borrowing. Bigger borrowing.
Nigeria’s total public debt has gone from N87 trillion when Buhari left to N159 trillion today. That is N72 trillion added in less than 3 years. The fastest debt accumulation in Nigeria’s history.
Clueless Buhari took 8 years to grow debt by N75 trillion. Tinubu did the same in under 3.
And debt servicing? Nigeria spent $9.9 billion just servicing external debt between June 2023 and August 2025. By 2028, debt servicing alone is projected to hit N91 trillion. That is more than Nigeria currently spends on health, education, and security combined.
Over 80% of government revenue goes to paying back loans. Not building schools. Not building hospitals. Not fixing roads.
Paying back loans.
Yet he is still borrowing.
The $516 million approved this week is not even the scary part. The scary part is that Tinubu has formally requested approval to borrow $21.54 billion, €2.19 billion, and ¥15 billion more. That is over $24 billion in one borrowing plan. More than 60% of Nigeria’s entire foreign exchange reserves.
Let that number sit in your chest for a moment. We are borrowing in all foreign available currencies.
A government that removed subsidies to save money is borrowing at a pace no Nigerian government in history has ever attempted.
So where is the money going?
Not to your electricity. That one you now pay for in full.
Not to your fuel. That one you now pay market price for.
Not to your roads. Those are still the same death traps.
Not to your hospitals. Doctors are still on strike or emigrating.
Not to your children’s schools. ASUU is always one disagreement away from another shutdown.
Nobody can account for it. No clear audit. No transparent project tracking. Just loan after loan after loan, approved in legislative chambers in a matter of hours, disappearing into a system that has never once been held accountable.
Jonathan borrowed, and we saw the Abuja-Kaduna rail and Universities across the country, etc.
Buhari borrowed, and we saw the completion of the second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Abuja airport terminal.
Whatever you think of those projects, they existed.
You could touch them. You could drive on them.
Tinubu has borrowed N72 trillion in under 3 years.
Point to what was built other than 40 kilometers of road and the purchase of Emblems for more tax.
This is not governance. This is a government that removed the one thing that kept ordinary Nigerians from complete destitution, handed the savings to a system nobody can audit, and then borrowed more on top of it, faster than any leader before them.
And every single Nigerian alive today, including newborns, is carrying a debt they did not consent to.
Every child born in Nigeria today is born owing.
That is not a metaphor. That is the balance sheet of a country being hollowed out in real time.
If this does not make you angry, check your pulse. The only hope we have is to have hope that things will get better, and this government continues to renew our hopes for a better Nigeria that they can’t give us.
This hope is a danger to our collective existence, and Nigerians are tired of Hope. In the midst of all these, the only defense the defenders of this government have is that “We Do Not Understand Economics.”
Is there anyone reading this who needs a PhD in economics to know when he or she is hungry and suffering?
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