At what point would enough be enough?! Every lender, whether multilateral institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), African Development Bank (AfDB), bilateral creditors such as China and the United States, or private financiers, must be called out for enabling yet another round of reckless borrowing by the Nigerian government, knowing full well that the loot from these loans rarely serves the people. On July 22, 2025, despite Nigeria drowning in a mountain of debt - ₦149.39 trillion as of Q1 2025, with another ₦37 trillion just rubber-stamped by the Senate, the money keeps flowing in from foreign and domestic creditors including the World Bank, IMF, China’s Exim Bank, the AfDB, and global bond markets. This brings our total public debt dangerously close to ₦187 trillion and is projected to soar over ₦200 trillion by the end of the year.
Let’s be absolutely clear: these lenders are not naive. They have witnessed the same cycles as we all have, billions borrowed for “critical projects” often financed by China and international bondholders, and time and again, these funds are looted, squandered, or vanish into thin air, while Nigerians receive nothing but more suffering. They know the outcomes. No transparent reforms. No real development. Only ever-increasing debt.
While Nigeria’s GDP was rebased upwards to about ₦372.8 trillion, with the government now owing more than 50% of GDP, the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in our history, basic infrastructure remains a disaster. More than 135,000km of roads across the nation are unpaved and unusable. The grid coughs up less than 5,000MW for over 200 million people. Education? Underfunded and decaying. Healthcare? Still inaccessible to millions. Public safety? A nightmare, with over 10,000 killed and 672 villages wiped out in just two years, despite security spending ballooning.
What is the result? MSF reports nearly 70,000 malnourished children treated in Katsina alone in the first half of 2025. A staggering 652 children have perished in that state from malnutrition since January. Across the North, nearly 25,000 severely malnourished children required inpatient care in five months, and yet aid is dwindling. The death toll keeps rising; the suffering deepens.
Despite Nigeria’s vast resources, 133 million, 63% of our citizens are now classified as multi-dimensionally poor, and the hardship continues to escalate. Every new loan, ostentatiously marketed as essential for nation-building and including the latest ones from the World Bank, IMF, China, the AfDB, and Eurobond investors, is in reality a mortgage placed on the future of our children to finance official corruption and waste.
Lenders must be held to account. You have institutional memory. You have a duty of care, yet you continue to pour money into a system with no meaningful accountability, no transparency, and with a history of endemic looting. This is not development finance. This is complicity in generational theft!
The Nigerian government must cut the cost of governance, block waste and leakages, and invest in people, not pad the pockets of the powerful. Until then, every kobo, every dollar, every yen borrowed is a betrayal.
Our nation cannot and must not be a perpetual victim of loan-fueled looting, while lenders pretend ignorance. The recklessness must end. We demand responsible leadership and lending, every borrowed cent must deliver tangible, people-centered development. Nigeria will never progress until this cycle of impunity and international enabling is shattered. It’s time to stand up and say: No more reckless borrowing, no more looted loans, Nigeria deserves better!