3-7-2025.

All patriotic citizens of Nigeria must be worried to hear that the country’s debt is said to balloon to a staggering 88.89 billion NOW, under the regime of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who inherited it at $28.57 from his immediate predecessor, former President Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari, who governed the country from May 29th, 2015 to May 29th, 2023, had inherited the debt of $7.3 billion from the Goodluck Jonathan administration in 1915.

According to a magazine “Nigeria’s total public debt has climbed to N149.39 trillion by the end of the first quarter of 2025, sparking concern among economists and financial experts over its growing size and lack of visible economic benefit.

The magazine quoted the Debt Management Office (DMO), as saying that “the debt stock rose by N27.72 trillion, or 22.8 percent, compared to the same period in 2024. The figures represent a further increase of NN4.7 trillion from the total as of December 2024, with analysts warning that the borrowing trends continues without tangible improvements to infrastructure or citizens welfare.

“The breakdown of the debt shows that external borrowing reached N70.63 trillion (45.98 billion), marking a 26.1 percent increase from N56.02 trillion ($42.12 billion) recorded in the same quarter last year. On the domestic front, debt stock rose by 20 percent year-on-year, hitting N78.76 trillion ($51.6 billion) as of March 2025. The Federal Government holds the bulk of this domestic debt at N74.89 trillion, while the state governments and the Federal Capital Territory are responsible for N3.87 trillion.

The consensus among the experts, according to the magazine, is that “Nigeria needs to adopt a new fiscal direction” or risk “eroding its ability to fund essential services, respond to economic shocks, and secure its long term financial future.”

But by the soaring public debt, the future generations are indebted to the tune of N669.90 each person, but in his second year in office address to the nation, the president claimed that the regiment of economic reforms undertaken by his regime is “aimed at securing the future of the generation yet unborn”.yet unborn. 

Nigeria under President Tinubu is definitely working for the future DIFFERENTLY from the rest of the world. The rest of the world, but the Banana Republic type, moves its citizens forward, not the BACKWARD movement that the present regime of President Tinubu has been pushing most of the citizens.

Hardly four months in office, the president used public funds singlehandedly to award to his company Hitech, which is managed by his Paris based Lebanese front, Michael Chaugry, to purchase for himself a brand new official plane, a brand new official yacht, and a brand new official car (all) from the United States.

In like manner, the president also awarded the 700 kilometres Lagos to Calabar Coastal Highway to the same company, Hitech, at a staggering N15.6 trillion, in a country that the president said was “very poor to continue paying subsidy on petroleum products”, because he has inherited an economy that is “in shambles”.

The president has removed fuel subsidy in his first month in office, has ordered for countless increases in the tariff of electricity, and ordered private service providers to do the same at will, without the expected corresponding benefits to most of the citizens of Nigeria. The only apparent beneficiaries are himself (enormously), his local high up friends, and his foreign masters in the United States (US), France and the United Kingdom (UK).

Despite the trillions of Naira being generated regularly by revenue making agencies like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Board of Internal Revenue (BIR), Ports Authority, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), the Nigeria Airport Authority (NPA) many others, most of Nigerian citizens are not served anything but extreme poverty, hunger and hardship.

There are also many, many borrowings by the president from foreign banks and local organisations, yet the money is nowhere to be seen, either in welfare to the citizens, or on the ground.

The International Conference Centre (ICC) was BUILT in 1991 by Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida at N240 million, but was REPAIRED in 2025 by the President Tinubu (a civilian) regime at the cost of N39 billion.

There are so many evidence beyond one’s capacity to narrate, confirming that Nigeria is at the moment overwhelmingly a corrupt country, in which one is either on the take or is considered a ‘risk not worth taking’ along with.

It happens only in Nigeria, you remove subsidy to reduce borrowing, and now borrow to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal, mused by a compatriot.

The system does not punish failure, only when the interest of the country’s leader is at stake, is action swiftly taken to punish the ‘guilty’, so as to serve as a ‘lesson’ to others. In a system that condones corruption, performance is often not tolerated, which explains why almost everyone in top places in the government is wantonly corrupt.

In her 1957 book ‘Atlas Shrugged’, the Russian born US writer, Ann Rand, once noted that, “When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain an order from men who produce nothing -When you see that money is flowing from those who deal, not in goods, but in favours - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see CORRUPTION being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is DOOMED”.

And former President Olusegun Obasanjo ruefully observed that “The two most successful industries in Nigeria are politics and religion. The sad reality however, is that the PEOPLE are the commodity”.

Nigeria looks exactly like the late 19th century US philosopher had described, and there is absolutely no doubt that, what is playing out at the moment will do anything but advance the interest of the country. Sheer Chronic CORRUPTION appears to be the only game in town on these shores.

 

May God NOT let Nigeria be affected again in 2027 by the kind of disaster and catastrophe we have in the country at the moment. What the nation has as a leaders is nothing short of disaster and catastrophe of the highest order.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.