INVESTIGATION: Nigeria’s ₦166.79 Trillion Debt Ledger: The Borrowings, Liabilities Behind the Numbers and the Burden on Nigerians -By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo

The issue is no longer simply how much Nigeria owes, but how the debt was accumulated, what each borrowing was meant to finance, what was actually financed, what has been repaid, what remains outstanding, and whether Nigerians can trace the money from the original borrowing decision to the obligation now sitting on the public balance sheet. Nigerians have every right to ask these questions, and those entrusted with public office have a responsibility to answer them with humility, transparency, and the accountability they promised when seeking the people’s mandate. If the records reveal discrepancies, unexplained movements, questionable transactions, or gaps between what was approved, borrowed, spent, and ultimately delivered, those issues must be investigated rather than buried beneath official figures or political arguments. And the time to ask those questions is now, not years later. History has repeatedly shown that some former officials, politicians, and public office holders who once appeared untouchable eventually found themselves answering questions before investigators, tribunals, or courts. That reality should make every custodian of public resources understand that power is temporary, but the public record endures. Nigeria’s debt ledger must therefore be subjected to the kind of scrutiny that follows the money, tests the records, and demands answers, because accountability delayed can become accountability lost, and Nigeria’s future cannot be built on unanswered questions. Nigeria can still rise, but the road to a greater Nigeria must begin with the courage to confront the truth about how the nation’s resources were borrowed, spent, and accounted for.

Nigeria’s public debt has climbed to ₦166.79 trillion, a figure large enough to dominate headlines but too complex to be understood from the headline alone.

The latest figures released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) put Nigeria’s total public debt at ₦166.788 trillion as of June 30, 2026, equivalent to US$120.933 billion. Domestic debt accounted for ₦91.590 trillion, or 54.91 percent, while external debt stood at ₦75.198 trillion, representing 45.09 percent of the total.

Compared with June 30, 2023, when total public debt stood at approximately ₦87.379 trillion, the stock has increased by about ₦79.409 trillion, or roughly 90.9 percent, in three years.

But the central question is not simply why the debt stock increased. It is what actually drove that increase.

A rise in the public debt stock should not automatically be interpreted as an equivalent amount of fresh cash borrowing. A debt stock is a balance-sheet position. It can change because of new borrowing, principal repayments, refinancing, restructuring, recognition of existing obligations, and exchange-rate movements affecting foreign-currency liabilities when translated into naira.

The exchange-rate effect is particularly important in Nigeria’s case. The DMO’s June 30, 2026 exchange rate was ₦1,379.1842 to the US dollar, compared with ₦770.38 to the dollar at June 30, 2023.

Nigeria’s external debt in June 2023 was approximately US$43.159 billion, translated by the DMO at about ₦33.249 trillion. If that same dollar-denominated stock were translated at the June 2026 exchange rate, its naira equivalent would be approximately ₦59.524 trillion. The illustrative difference is about ₦26.28 trillion, demonstrating how exchange-rate movements alone can materially increase the naira value of an unchanged dollar debt stock.

At the same time, Nigeria’s external debt in dollar terms did rise. It increased from approximately US$43.159 billion in June 2023 to US$54.524 billion in June 2026, an increase of about US$11.365 billion. At the June 2026 exchange rate, that increase would translate to approximately ₦15.67 trillion. But even this is a change in debt stock, not a transaction-level statement that Nigeria received ₦15.67 trillion in new cash borrowing.

The domestic side presents another major component. Domestic debt increased from approximately ₦54.130 trillion in June 2023 to ₦91.590 trillion in June 2026, a rise of about ₦37.46 trillion.

Taken together, the illustrative components of the three-year stock movement are the increase in domestic debt, the change in the dollar value of external debt, and the exchange-rate translation effect. They help explain the arithmetic of the changing debt stock, but they are not, by themselves, a transaction-level accounting of every naira of fresh borrowing.

One of the most important legacy liabilities in the debt story is the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Ways and Means financing. The DMO stated that the approximately ₦22.712 trillion securitised Ways and Means balance as of June 2023 was already included in Nigeria’s public debt stock at that date. It therefore cannot be treated as a fresh ₦22.7 trillion borrowing added after June 2023.

The DMO’s June 2026 domestic-debt schedule records the securitised Ways and Means balance at approximately ₦22.106 trillion. The key questions, therefore, concern how the Ways and Means obligations accumulated, how they were securitised, the terms attached to the securitisation, the fiscal obligations created by the arrangement, and its effect on debt-service requirements.

The distinction matters because subtracting the ₦22.712 trillion Ways and Means balance from the 2026 debt stock and presenting the remainder as fresh borrowing since 2023 would produce a misleading calculation. The liability was already part of the June 2023 public debt stock.

Conversely, the entire ₦79.409 trillion increase in the public debt stock between June 2023 and June 2026 cannot simply be described as ₦79.409 trillion of fresh cash borrowing. Establishing the precise amount of new borrowing requires a transaction-level reconciliation covering federal government bonds, Treasury bills, Sukuk and other domestic instruments, international capital-market borrowing, multilateral and bilateral disbursements, principal repayments, refinancing, and other changes in the debt portfolio.

The June 2026 debt structure also shows the concentration of obligations at the federal level. Federal Government domestic debt stood at approximately ₦86.999 trillion, compared with about ₦4.591 trillion owed domestically by states and the Federal Capital Territory.

On the external side, the Federal Government accounted for approximately US$47.691 billion, while states and the FCT accounted for about US$6.833 billion. In naira terms, the combined debt of states and the FCT was approximately ₦14.015 trillion, comprising ₦4.591 trillion in domestic debt and about ₦9.424 trillion in external debt.

This means that the Federal Government remains responsible for the overwhelming majority of the public debt stock, with approximately ₦152.774 trillion of the total ₦166.788 trillion attributable to federal obligations.

The cost of servicing the debt provides another dimension to the investigation. During the second quarter of 2026, domestic debt service amounted to approximately ₦2.144 trillion, comprising about ₦1.980 trillion in interest and rental payments and ₦164.282 billion in principal repayments.

External debt service during the same quarter amounted to US$870.733 million. This comprised approximately US$339.754 million in principal repayments, US$491.730 million in interest, and US$39.250 million in other charges.

The external debt-service burden was spread across creditor categories. Multilateral creditors accounted for approximately US$404.223 million, bilateral creditors for US$140.814 million, and commercial creditors for US$325.696 million during the quarter.

The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) together accounted for approximately US$20.730 billion of Nigeria’s external debt, comprising about US$19.123 billion owed to IDA and US$1.607 billion to IBRD. That represents roughly 38 percent of the approximately US$54.524 billion external debt stock.

However, approved financing should not automatically be presented as money already borrowed or disbursed. The distinction is particularly relevant to recent World Bank facilities.

The World Bank approved a US$500 million IDA credit for the Nigeria Sustainable Agricultural Value-Chains for Growth (AGROW) project on March 30, 2026. It also approved a US$1.25 billion Nigeria Actions for Investment and Jobs Acceleration Development Policy Financing package in June 2026, comprising US$500 million from IBRD and US$750 million from IDA. The second is budget support, released in two tranches.

The World Bank database, available as of September 25, 2026, showed zero disbursement against these facilities. Consequently, the combined US$1.75 billion should not be described as money already borrowed simply because the facilities had been approved. Approval, commitment, effectiveness, and actual disbursement are separate stages in sovereign financing.

The fiscal implications are also visible in official projections. The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 Article IV assessment puts Federal Government interest payments at 53.7 percent of Federal Government revenue in 2026, compared with 53.2 percent in 2025 and 40.8 percent in 2024, while assessing Nigeria’s risk of debt distress as moderate.

President Bola Tinubu also said in May 2026 that Nigeria would spend about US$11.6 billion on debt service in 2026, describing the amount as nearly half of projected revenue. That figure should be understood as a presidential statement or projection rather than as an audited full-year debt-service outturn.

Nigeria’s 2026 budget provides approximately ₦15.8 trillion for debt service, while the budget speech had projected about ₦15.52 trillion. The difference between a budget provision, a fiscal projection, and actual expenditure is important when assessing the country’s eventual debt-service burden.

The scale of the debt can also be illustrated on a per-capita basis. Using the World Bank’s 2025 population estimate of approximately 237.53 million people, Nigeria’s ₦166.788 trillion public debt stock would equate to roughly ₦702,000 per person. This is an illustrative statistical calculation, not an indication that each Nigerian personally owes that amount.

The larger issue is therefore not whether Nigeria has borrowed money. It clearly has. The more important question is how much of the present debt stock represents new financing, how much reflects accumulated or previously recognised obligations, how much has been affected by currency translation, how much has been refinanced, and how much has already been repaid.

The available public records establish the scale and composition of the debt stock, but headline debt figures alone cannot provide a complete transaction-by-transaction reconstruction of the increase from June 2023 to June 2026. That reconstruction requires the underlying borrowing and repayment records to be matched against the changes reported by the DMO.

This is particularly important in the case of large legacy obligations such as Ways and Means financing. Treating a liability that had already been incurred but was subsequently securitised and recognised in the public debt stock as if it were entirely new borrowing after June 2023 would distort the debt trajectory. Equally, treating exchange-rate-driven increases in the naira value of foreign debt as if they were cash loans would also distort the picture.

Nigeria’s debt, therefore, cannot responsibly be described as either entirely new borrowing or merely an accounting illusion. It is a combination of accumulated obligations, new financing, domestic and external borrowing, repayments, refinancing, and exchange-rate movements.

The real accountability test is whether every significant addition to Nigeria’s public balance sheet can ultimately be traced through a clear paper trail, transaction trail, disbursement trail, and accountability trail to an authorised borrowing decision, a documented purpose, an identifiable beneficiary, a measurable public outcome, and a transparent repayment obligation.

That is where the ₦166.79 trillion figure moves beyond a headline. The question is no longer simply how much Nigeria owes, but how the debt was accumulated, what it financed, what remains outstanding, what has been repaid, and whether Nigerians can follow the money from the original borrowing decision to the obligation now recorded on the public balance sheet.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and policy analyst based in Nigeria. He is the founder and publisher of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate (PIHRA), a platform documenting the courage of human rights defenders and examining issues of governance, accountability, security, and fundamental rights.

His reporting on Nigerian governance, security-sector accountability, public finance, and human rights has appeared in Sahara Reporters, Vanguard, Daily Trust, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel.

Read more of his work on the PIHRA website:
https://www.profilesinternationalhumanrightsadvocate.com.ng/

For tips, feedback, or collaboration, contact him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com.