Nigeria’s Debt Record Controversy : 2015-2023 Borrowed$32.6bn; Tinubu Borrowed $9.4bn From 2023 till date
The debt debate in Nigeria has been loud, political, and mostly wrong on the facts. One claim took hold early in Tinubu’s tenure: that he is the biggest borrower since 1999, perhaps larger than all past presidents combined. The Debt Management Office data reviewed in Ogho Okiti’s June 2026 ThinkBusiness Africa brief dismantles that claim. When you measure debt in the currency it is borrowed and repaid, the record is clear. The largest jump in Nigeria’s external debt stock in the democratic era happened between 2015 and 2023, not after.
Nigeria’s external debt was about 10.3 billion dollars when Muhammadu Buhari assumed office in 2015. By May 2023 it had climbed to 42.9 billion dollars. That is a net addition of 32.6 billion dollars in eight years. Bola Tinubu inherited 42.5 billion dollars in May 2023. By December 2025 it stood at 51.9 billion dollars. The net increase under Tinubu is 9.4 billion dollars from 2023 till date. In dollar terms, Buhari’s period added 3.5 times more external debt than Tinubu’s first two and a half years. Total public debt reinforces the point. From Q1 2023 to Q4 2025, domestic debt in dollar terms actually fell by about 6.5 billion dollars. Combine external and domestic, and total public debt rose by only 2.7 billion dollars in that window, even as the naira headline surged by roughly N109.4 trillion.
Why the gap between perception and data? The naira. Debt is also an exchange rate. The 42.5 billion dollars Tinubu met was valued at N19.6 trillion under the old managed FX regime. After exchange-rate unification in June 2023, the same stock revalued to about N33.2 trillion. No new dollar was borrowed, but the naira figure exploded. The second distortion is accounting. N23.9 trillion in Ways and Means advances, central bank overdrafts built up under Buhari, were securitised into bonds in 2023. That moved old liabilities onto the debt stock through reclassification, not fresh cash. Strip out FX revaluation and Ways and Means, and net new domestic issuance since mid-2023 is about N30.7 trillion. Large, but nowhere near the N109.4 trillion headline that drives the “Tinubu borrowed most” story. Compare naira numbers before and after June 2023 without adjusting for the regime shift, and you will always overstate Tinubu and understate Buhari.
The longer ledger matters too. Obasanjo cut external debt from roughly 28 billion dollars in 1999 to 3.4 billion dollars by 2007 after Paris Club and London Club deals. That was debt reduction on a historic scale. Yar’Adua and Jonathan added modestly from 2007 to 2015. The structural break came after 2015, when external borrowing rose sharply to fund infrastructure, plug deficits, and support a managed exchange rate. The DMO tables show the pattern: gradual rise 1999-2015, steep rise 2015-2023, then a flattening in dollar terms 2023-2025 despite the naira re-pricing.
Yet “who borrowed most” misses the real constraint. Nigeria’s fiscal bind is not the stock, it is debt service. Debt-service payments now take a substantial share of federal revenue. That ratio, not the headline, determines what government can spend on roads, power, health, education, and security. The service burden reflects Eurobond coupons, bilateral and multilateral repayments, domestic bond interest, and the higher naira cost of paying FX debt after devaluation. Those obligations were stacked across several administrations. Whoever holds office pays the bill. Weak revenue makes it tighter. A debt profile is sustainable only if revenue can carry the payments without killing growth-enhancing investment.
The market understands this link. Sovereign risk sets the price for every loan and bond in Nigeria. When S&P upgraded Nigerian banks following the sovereign upgrade, and when FTSE Russell scheduled Nigeria’s return to Frontier Market status for September 2026, the value of credible debt reporting went up. Misreading the stock because of FX translation or Ways and Means reclassification leads to mispriced risk, and mispriced risk raises funding costs for banks, firms, and the government. Transparency is a fiscal tool: separate new borrowing from revaluation, publish dollar figures alongside naira, and show the refinancing calendar. Investors care less about who borrowed most than whether borrowing builds assets that lift revenue and GDP.
So the record is straight. In external dollar terms, 2015-2023 borrowed 32.6 billion dollars. From 2023 till date, Tinubu borrowed 9.4 billion dollars. In domestic dollar terms, the stock fell under Tinubu while it rose under Buhari. In naira terms, Tinubu’s period looks largest, but that is the shadow of FX reform and the recognition of old CBN overdrafts. The true fiscal story is that Nigeria entered the current reform cycle with a large inherited stock, a weaker exchange rate, and a debt-service bill that dictates policy room.
The conversation should shift from blame to capacity. The test is not the past ledger but the path of debt service to revenue, the credibility of refinancing, and whether new borrowing funds productive capital. The 2015-2023 years built most of the burden. The 2023-2025 years re-priced it. The 2027 judgment will be whether revenue and growth rose fast enough to make that inherited debt affordable.
