The Presidency on Monday allayed fears that Nigeria’s international debts were on the rise, saying that the opposite is currently the case.
The Special Assistant to the Presidency on Economy, Dr Tope Fasua, while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday, noted that the country’s debts have eased by 39 per cent since the current administration came into office in 2023.
At 39 per cent of GDP, Nigeria is actually under-borrowing. And of course, regarding debt servicing, the last data I got last month was 64 per cent lower. In 2022, there was a point when our debt was as high as 120 per cent. We used all our revenues to service debts, and we had to borrow 20 per cent extra just to service that same debt.
So currently, our debt management is not so bad. I think we are doing a great job in the area of debt management, if you ask me. For one reason or the other, right now, the states have been able to pay down 42 per cent of their debts between 2023 and 2024.
A country is run like a company. A company that is thriving…let’s call it a conglomerate, thinks about how to pay down debt. We service debts…We pay some and take new ones because we are growing and want to expand our horizon in the global market. You have to go into that part of productivity, which may necessitate you to take more loans and pay down some debts,” he said, quickly adding that the government, however, welcomed constructive criticisms.
Of course, I welcome criticisms in terms of looking at what our priorities are, what kind of debts we should be taking, what kind of interest rates to look at, who to take the loans from, how we are managing the debts, and how we can ensure that the money is actually going into what it is meant for. Are there cash flow projects that can be brought in to service the debts, even if we don’t have funds to pay everything?
Nigeria’s external debt stood at approximately $45.97 billion (N70.63 trillion) as of Q1 2025. This figure represents a 26.07% year-on-year increase from the Q1 2024 period, attributed to new government loans and the depreciation of the naira. The external debt data was provided by the Debt Management Office (DMO) and reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The government agencies blamed the rise in new loans and the weakening of the naira.
Fusua, however, argued that the country had a huge infrastructural gap that needed to be filled through borrowings to meet project demands across the country.
Nigeria has a huge lacuna of infrastructural needs of about $3 trillion or more every year to fill. We have roads to build across the country. All of these are very important projects. And we still have a lot of maintenance work to do on a lot of infrastructure that we have built.
One of the things I have been writing about is the centrality of infrastructure towards reducing multidimensional poverty.
Multi-dimensional poverty is defined as the non-income poverty, poverty related to the availability of infrastructure. Therefore, the only way you can review multi-dimensional poverty is to fund infrastructure.
So for me, we have taken more people out of poverty, probably about 120 million persons have been taken out of multi-dimensional poverty, he added.
Inflation To Further Ease
He assured Nigerians that the inflation rate is heading towards a single digit and will translate to better living conditions for the masses.
According to him, the current drop in the inflation rate has impacted on prices of food items, which are beginning to ease.
The Presidency’s assurance followed headline inflation data just released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The NBS said the inflation rate eased to 20.12 per cent in August 2025 compared to the July 2025 rate, which stood at 21.88 per cent.
Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, merely made a political statement which is expected at this time, because he’s trying to see how he can wangle himself back into the presidency, and I don’t comment on political things
He doesn’t have to commend the current government for the achievement, but the rest of us just need to stick with the black and white
A 20.12 inflation is still large in many quarters because what it says is that prices are still increasing in some quarters, but not as they used to be. It is rebasing. The rebasing came in about six years after it ought to have been done. Our concern should be that our statistics and data should be much more on point and frequent.
So the rebasing was done, and it gave us the true picture of where we are. So, for every emotional reason, somebody believes that we should still be around 30 per cent. Well, that is their own cup of tea. The most important thing is that the rebasing was done several months back, and what we are seeing is then consistent drop in inflation.
Inflation does not increase forever, not in any country. We have Ghana next to us, with inflation up to 40 per cent. Today, their inflation is trending down to a single digit.
Nigeria’s inflation will get to a single digit as well; it’s a matter of time.
Pakistan’s economy experienced inflation of up to 40 per cent some two years ago. Today, they are battling deflation, which is even a bigger issue because when there is no incentive for people to produce more goods themselves, everything goes down again.
Nigeria’s inflation will certainly go to a single digit. Besides, that’s not the only positive thing we can see, he noted.
He also spoke about the naira appreciating to the N1,400 region, including the increase in crude oil prices in the international market.
Yesterday, the naira traded at some point, N1,497/$1. For the first time in like eight months, we have clocked the N1,400 region, and that’s remarkable.
And if we look at why the inflation is reducing, for anybody that cares to know, of course, crude is one of our key drivers of inflation. The exchange rate is also another key driver. The exchange rate has stabilised, and it’s actually via market forces.
The crude prices are also increasing. A very respected source I respect in the agriculture sector, told me that for the first time in 26 years, this year, we did not have the usual recourse around tomato prices soaring and shortages. Some farmers are even complaining that the government is now crashing food prices to make it affect their businesses negatively.
Nigerians, including these farmers, are enjoying the drop in food prices because they are much more stable, he claimed.
