Mortgaging Children’s Future To Pay For Today’s Waste: Tinubu’s $20.5Bn Loan Adventure To Generational Poverty

By Adetunji Aderohunmu

“For the masses, the toll is not abstract economics, it is daily survival. That some Nigerians now spend as much as 120% of their income on food, as disclosed by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, should shame any borrowing plan that does not come with ruthless transparency” –

The proposed $20.5 billion overseas mortgage shouldn’t be a pathway to development however one other heavy anchor on an already sinking economic system. For years, Nigerians have been advised that borrowing is critical to fund infrastructure, stimulate development, and create jobs. Yet the lived actuality is starkly totally different. Our complete public debt inventory has already hit N166.79 trillion as of June 2026, with exterior debt at N75.2 trillion, and will method N200 trillion if this recent $20.5bn plus €1.04bn request is added. Debt servicing now consumes 53.7% of Federal Government income in response to the IMF, and the naira continues to weaken towards the greenback. Each new mortgage pushes the price of compensation onto the long run, whereas the supposed initiatives stay both incomplete, inflated, or invisible to the extraordinary citizen who navigates potholed roads and epileptic energy provide every day.

The mechanics of this borrowing reveal a troubling sample that straight harms the lots. When authorities borrows in {dollars}, it should earn {dollars} to repay. With oil manufacturing nonetheless under goal and non-oil exports underperforming, the stress falls on the change charge. The naira depreciates, import prices rise, and inflation, already brutal for meals, transport, and lease, spikes additional.

The Nigerian Government could converse of productive investments, however the market speaks louder: greater costs available in the market, smaller parts on the desk, and a transport fare that now consumes a full day’s wage. The Finance Minister can defend the mortgage in Abuja boardrooms, however the dealer in Onitsha and the farmer in Gusau pay the true curiosity.

For the lots, the toll shouldn’t be summary economics, it’s every day survival. That some Nigerians now spend as a lot as 120% of their revenue on meals, as disclosed by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, ought to disgrace any borrowing plan that doesn’t include ruthless transparency. The identical authorities that asks staff to just accept a short lived N70,000 transport allowance for six months as reduction is making ready to mortgage their youngsters’s future with dollar-denominated debt. When N264 billion in UBEC funds lies idle whereas public colleges collapse, it turns into troublesome to imagine that new billions shall be spent effectively. Borrowing has develop into an alternative to self-discipline, for plugging leaks, for recovering stolen funds, and for making powerful decisions on waste and bloated governance prices.

Ebola in Abuja: Deja Vu and the Fragility of Preparedness, By Adetunji Aderohunmu

Ògògó: Death on the River Bank, By Oladeinde Olawoyin

Lagos Suffers 11,000 MW Power Supply Shortfall – AFSIA

66 Years After Independence, Nigeria Still Has No Fuel Consumption Data — NMDPRA Boss Reveals What Authority Is Doing

‘Crude Swap Coming Back,’ Nigeria Mulls Deal, $4 Cut Off Cost for Domestic Refineries

$2.4bn Subsidy Fraud Probe Triggered My Mother’s Kidnap, Okonjo-Iweala Recounts Ordeal

Nigeria doesn’t want extra debt; it wants extra accountability. If these loans had been really tied to revenue-generating, audited initiatives with clear timelines and revealed prices, the dialog can be totally different. Instead, Nigerians have seen mortgage after mortgage authorised with little public scrutiny and even much less influence.

A legacy of debt and enslavement, as critics have warned, shouldn’t be inbuilt in the future, it’s constructed mortgage by mortgage, with every administration leaving the invoice for the subsequent. The President ought to halt this request, publish a full audit of previous borrowings, and deal with chopping the price of governance, increasing the tax base pretty, and reviving home productiveness. Otherwise, the $20.5 billion is not going to construct a greater economic system, it’s going to merely deepen the outlet the lots are already struggling to climb out of.

Adetunji Aderohunmu writes in from Lagos, Nigeria

EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions expressed on this article are solely these of the creator. They don’t essentially signify the editorial place of NOP NIGERIA

NOP NIGERIA