By Eculaw Group
The Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is not a man given to empty statements. When he speaks on economics, he speaks as a former Central Bank Governor who has spent his career studying exactly how governments handle, and mishandle, public money. So when Sanusi stood up this week and asked the Tinubu administration a direct question, every Nigerian should pay close attention.
His question was simple: “We’ve removed the subsidy. What we should now see is fiscal consolidation. You cannot remove subsidies and continue borrowing. If you’re not paying subsidy and you have the money, why are we still borrowing? What are we borrowing for?”
It is a devastating question. And the Tinubu administration has not answered it.
The Numbers Are Not Lies:
Let us begin with the facts – because the facts alone are alarming enough without any political commentary.
When President Tinubu took office in May 2023, Nigeria’s public debt stood at N87.379 trillion. By September 2024 – barely sixteen months later – it had risen to N142.319 trillion, an increase of N56.6 trillion borrowed by this administration alone. By December 2025, Nigeria’s total public debt had climbed further to N159.28 trillion, equivalent to $110.97 billion. The Tinubu administration has indicated it intends to borrow an additional N17.89 trillion in 2026 alone.
To put this in human terms: Nigeria’s debt per capita, that is, each citizen’s share of the national debt, has now reached N66,250. Every Nigerian man, woman, and child, including the 133 million living in multidimensional poverty, carries that burden.
In 2025 alone, Nigeria spent N16 trillion servicing its debt, an increase of N2.98 trillion or 22.9 percent from the previous year. Domestic debt service rose by 46.6 percent year-on-year, with interest payments alone consuming N8.24 trillion. The newly signed 2026 budget of N68.32 trillion allocates N15.8 trillion to debt service – more than is allocated to recurrent expenditure, and nearly equal to the capital expenditure provision.
In plain language: Nigeria is now spending more money paying back loans than it spends running its government services. Schools, hospitals, roads, and security are being crowded out by the cost of borrowing.
The Promise That Was Made:
The removal of the fuel subsidy in May 2023 was sold to Nigerians on a specific basis. The subsidy, Nigerians were told, was consuming money that should be going to hospitals, schools, and infrastructure. Remove it, and those funds would be freed up for development. The pain would be temporary. The gain would be structural and lasting.
Nigerians accepted that pain. Petrol prices multiplied. Transport costs multiplied. Food prices multiplied. The cost of everything that requires fuel to produce, store, or move multiplied. Ordinary Nigerians have been living with that reality for nearly three years.
Sanusi himself acknowledged the necessity of the reform: “When you get to a point where 100 percent of your revenue goes into debt service, you cannot continue.” He supported subsidy removal. He supported exchange rate liberalisation. But he was equally clear that these reforms were only justifiable if they led to fiscal consolidation, to the government spending within its means and reducing its dependence on borrowing. That has not happened. The opposite has happened.
The Question That Remains Unanswered:
Analysts at the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre noted that around 60 percent of Nigeria’s anticipated spending is being covered through new borrowings, pointing out increasing reliance on debt to finance the 2025 budget, “a concerning shift from earlier promises to reduce dependence on debt by focusing on foreign direct investment and equity financing.”
Nigeria’s federal government is on course to spend more than N91 trillion on debt service alone between 2023 and 2028. Meanwhile, capital releases – money actually spent building roads, hospitals, and schools – have consistently fallen far behind debt service payments. Pro-rated capital expenditure for the first seven months of 2025 stood at just N3.59 trillion, compared with a budget expectation of N13.6 trillion for the same period.
This means Nigeria is borrowing heavily, paying most of what it borrows back in interest, and still not building the infrastructure that borrowing is supposed to finance. It is the fiscal equivalent of taking out a loan to pay the interest on a previous loan, a cycle that ends only one way.
Sanusi’s question deserves a public answer: the subsidy is gone, oil revenue has increased, and Nigerians are suffering. Where is the money? What exactly is being borrowed for? And who is accounting for it?
Until this administration answers those questions with verifiable data – not press releases and statements about “Renewed Hope” – every Nigerian is entitled to conclude that the borrowing is not for their benefit. History, and the numbers, suggest it rarely is.
