Why Nigeria is so broke

The year was 2006. President Olusegun Obasanjo was preparing to leave office for the final time. He had worked tirelessly to build Nigeria’s foreign reserves from its lows of $5 billion in 1999 to about $42 billion in 2006.

This was despite crude oil selling for an average of $46 per barrel during his administration. But there was something that kept weighing the Nigerian Naira down. Even with $42 billion in foreign reserves, Obasanjo’s administration was facing heavy criticism and pressure from all corners because of this heavy burden.

You see, this burden weighed a whopping $36 billion. Yeah, that was how much Nigeria owed in external debt at the time. Most of that amount was owed to the Paris Club, a group of major creditor countries that included the United States, United Kingdom, France, and some other Western countries.

Then came April 2006 and Obasanjo said, quote, Nigeria will not owe anybody in the Paris Club one cub. A few days after this bold declaration, there was this headline from the New York Times saying, quote, Nigeria pays off its big debt, sign of an economic rebound. Baba had done it.

Before this huge announcement was made, the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration had been engaged in discussions with the Paris Club on this Nigeria’s debt burden. Those discussions yielded results when, in 2005, the Paris Club proposed an unprecedented debt buyback at a discount. They agreed to a 60% discount on Nigeria’s debt that would cancel all of Nigeria’s debt to them if Nigeria could come up with a cash payment of roughly $12 billion, meaning the Nigerian government only needed to pay $12 billion of the 30 they owed.

Now, with $18 billion being written off then, Obasanjo’s administration was able to pay the balance of $12 billion, and from there, Nigeria became debt-free, at least for the time being. This helped stabilize the value of the Naira at the time, and with crude oil prices up during this time, the Nigerian economy grew rapidly to the top spot in Africa, a growth that continued during the administration of Yardwa through to that of Goodluck Jonathan. Then 2015 happened, and Nigeria’s economy became unrecognizable.

Now, to show you exactly how bad the situation is, Nigeria is reportedly using almost all of its revenue to service debt. But how did we get here? Come with me, and I’ll show you. Nigeria’s debt profile.

7.6 trillion Naira in domestic debt. 7.22 billion dollars. The country’s debt service cost in the first quarter of this year was 1.94 trillion Naira.

The Nigerian government currently owes a total of $91 billion. That is both domestic and foreign debt. Of that amount, $42 billion is said to be foreign.

Now, according to Bloomberg, Nigeria spent 80% of its revenue on debt servicing in the first 11 months of 2022. The World Bank placed that figure at around 96% for the entire year of 2022. But you know what’s more worrying? Spending 96% of your revenue to pay debt means you’re borrowing almost 100% of your annual budget.

This is scary because records show that it is getting worse and not better. Between 1999 and 2021, local and external federal government borrowings jumped from 3.55 trillion Naira to 26.91 trillion Naira, an increase of 658%. Between June 2015 to December 2020, Buhari borrowed 7.6 trillion Naira.

President Mohamed Buhari increased Nigerians’ debt from $7.3 billion in 2015 to $28.57 billion as of December 2020. This caused the country’s exchange rate to move from 197 Naira to the dollar in 2015 to 381 Naira at the end of December 2020. We are talking about 1% increase in Nigerians’ debt by 173.2% in just 6 years.

In comparison, President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration met Nigeria’s debt profile at 6.17 trillion Naira in 2011. According to a report by The Cable, local debt amounted to 5.62 trillion Naira while foreign debt stood at $3.5 billion. The exchange rate at the time was 156.7 Naira to $1.

In 2014, towards the end of Jonathan’s administration, external debt was $6.45 billion. Domestic debt rose to 7.9 trillion Naira while the Naira fell slightly to 158.6 Naira to $1. After the elections, however, everything changed.

By the end of 2015, Nigerians’ foreign debt jumped to $7.3 billion while domestic debt increased by 8.4 trillion Naira. The Naira crashed to $197 per dollar. Not even a year in office yet, Buhari immediately gave Nigerians a clue of how his government planned to carry its affairs.

So far, Buhari is the country’s biggest borrower, increasing public debt by more than 173%. Oh, hang on, there is Tinubu now, whose administration has been acting like a bunch of 5-year-old kids with happy Christmas money in a candy shop. According to the Vanguard, the federal government under Tinubu borrowed 20.1 trillion Naira from domestic investors in the first year of President Tinubu’s administration alone.

But why are they borrowing this much? What are they doing with all this money? Now, the most apparent reason for Nigeria’s rising debt profile is the rising cost of governance. This is simply put, any cost associated with the running of government. This includes recurrent and capital expenditure.

While recurrent expenditure talks about the amount of money the government spends on overhead and personnel costs, capital expenditure on the other hand talks about government expenditure in providing infrastructural facilities. The problem with the Nigerian situation is that the government is borrowing a whole lot of money to spend on overhead and personnel costs. As a result, infrastructure is in decay while the people in power focus on buying yachts, jets, SUVs, and building mansions.

The point I’m trying to make here is, spending billions of borrowed funds to give public officials lavish lifestyles has reduced the amount of money available for capital expenditures. This means roads don’t get built, hospitals are poorly managed, some have no lights, and others have collapsing structures. Let’s not even get into the education sector.

There is literally no money to improve our power infrastructures leading to the national power grid collapsing every four market days. The public transportation system is a mess. No rail lines in major cities to help solve the public transportation crisis.

Now, all of this put together have led to a fall in investments. Companies are running away which in turn has led to a reduction in the level of employment which ultimately led to the stagnation of our economic growth. Also to add, borrowing a ton of money without restraint is bad.

Yeah, pretty bad. But how? You might ask. Well, more debt means a weaker Naira.

The weaker Naira means imports of goods are more expensive and exports bring in little value as a result. The weaker Naira also means crazy levels of inflation like we are witnessing right now. Food items are very expensive and people are no longer able to afford household items.

There is also the debt servicing we talked about earlier. Nigeria is currently using 96% of its revenue to service debt. Imagine working for 30 days and you are paid 500,000 Naira but then you have to use 408,000 Naira from that amount to pay your debt.

How do you survive on 20,000 Naira for another 30 days? It means you will have to borrow again and again and so the cycle continues. But is there a fix for this mess we are in? When the current president of Argentina was sworn in back in December 2023, his country’s situation was worse than Nigeria’s. But what did he do? Well, he took measures to reduce government spending.

It’s not a magic trick. All he did was cut down on the size of government, block the stealing of government funds, attract foreign direct investment through tax holidays, and improve the ease of doing business in the country. If you’re broke, you don’t need to go on a spending spree to build a mansion and buy a jet and a yacht and whatnot.

In all honesty, if Nigeria were a company, it would have filed for bankruptcy by now and maybe all the managers and directors could be behind bars. You see, when the last administration was under a lot of pressure to get money to run its operations, they went to the central bank and turned it into a printing press. With every Naira they printed, the Naira lost more value, inflation soared, and your savings became worth less than they used to be.

The result of that recklessness is still being felt today, with the current administration even worsening the situation with its borrowing and spending. Like I said earlier, the Tenibo administration has been acting like a bunch of five-year-old kids with happy Christmas money in a candy shop. They know they didn’t work to end this money they’re spending because of course these are loans.

However, they’re hell-bent on spending it all, but not on infrastructures, not on capital investment to help prop up the Nigerian economy. They tell you that the government is taking some loans to run its operations, then you turn on the news only to see that one of these operations is a VP residence that cost the country 21 billion Naira of money it doesn’t have. Imagine borrowing 21 billion Naira to build a mansion for your vice president at a time like this.

Are you trying to show to the people you borrowed this money from that all is well back at home? Because Nigerians know that all is not well here. So, who exactly are you trying to impress? You see, African leaders are the only crop of people that travel to western countries with about 200 delegates, spend millions of dollars in five-star hotels to attend meetings with their creditors whom they have gone to beg for money. My question to Nigerian leaders is, are you not ashamed of yourselves? When you jump on private jets to take you around the world, do you by any chance meet politicians from other countries with good economies? If you do, can you tell us what your conversation with them is usually like? Do you even talk to them? Because, make it make sense here.

How do you introduce yourself to the British Prime Minister, for example, when you go to one of these your meetings? Tell me, do you say, hey, I’m a senator from Nigeria. Yeah, I’m one of the folks who sing a song of allegiance to the president I should be holding accountable. I also try to warn people in my constituency who, by the way, voted for me against all forms of protest against the hunger they are currently enduring.

Or, do you say, I’m minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Yes, we know the economy is terrible right now, but Nigerians just need to sacrifice while we, the people elected to serve them, live our best lives. And to the governors, how do you live with yourselves? When you look into the mirror, who do you see? A father? A servant of the people? Or a wicked politician who doesn’t care about the plight of his people? For those who want to make Nigerians believe that economic hardship is a trial from God, how do you live with yourself? And to my fellow Nigerians, you need to know the truth.

Our economy is bad because of the terrible decisions of our leaders. When you take on loans as an individual, for example, and use those monies to buy fancy clothes to wear and oppress your neighbours, you’d better have a plan on how you’re going to pay back that money. Because when the time for repayment comes and you have not generated any income to pay back, there’s bound to be trouble.

That is the trouble we are in today. Most of the loans we are taking are being used to finance recurrent expenditures. Only a tiny fraction is used for capital expenditure.

Instead of investing in things that can yield results for the economy and help boost our GDP, our politicians are busy sharing money as palliatives. A year ago in 2023, Tinubu wrote to the National Assembly seeking 500 billion Naira for palliatives. July 2024, the federal government is sending 740 rice trucks to states.

How many Nigerians will even see these trucks? Not to talk of getting a grain of rice from these bags.