Monday 20 April, 2026

Nigeria's debt is improving. Then it gets worse. Right when it matters most.

The IMF doesn't usually time its numbers for maximum inconvenience. It doesn't have to. The numbers do it themselves.

Last Wednesday at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, the Fund released its Fiscal Monitor report. Nigeria's debt-to-GDP ratio in 2026 is 32.3 per cent. That's down from 35.5 per cent in 2025. The narrative writes itself. Tinubu's reforms are working. The numbers are improving. Things are moving in the right direction.

Then you read the next line.

In 2027, Nigeria's debt-to-GDP rises again to 33.1 per cent. 2027 is election year. That is the year Tinubu needs the economy to feel like progress. The year Nigerians go to the polls carrying everything the past four years has cost them. The IMF is projecting that the debt ratio, after the painful improvement of 2025 and 2026, reverses direction precisely in that year.

The reason is not complicated. The Tinubu administration has requested National Assembly approval for $6 billion in new external borrowing. The debt improvement of 2025 and 2026 came partly from exchange rate stabilisation and fiscal adjustment. Adding $6 billion in external debt in 2027 will push the ratio upward. Global interest rates are elevated. Nigeria's risk premium has barely moved. That borrowing lands at the exact moment the books need to look their best.

Nigeria's total public debt across federal and state governments already stands at N159.27 trillion as of Q4 2025. That is a N14.6 trillion increase in one year.

There is a complication worth naming. The earlier IMF projection, revised downward from 35.3 per cent, is an improvement from what was expected for 2027. The picture is not simply deteriorating. But the direction in election year matters more than the absolute level. Voters don't feel debt ratios. They feel prices. They feel whether their salary stretches further than last year. The IMF also revised Nigeria's 2026 growth forecast down from 4.4 per cent to 4.1 per cent. Not dramatic. But in January the Fund was more optimistic. Three months later it is less so.

The ordinary Nigerian reading this isn't running economic models. They're calculating whether fuel, food, and school fees are moving in a direction they can manage. The IMF number tells the external story. The pump price tells the domestic one. They are telling the same story from different angles, and neither story ends at Wednesday's stakeholder meeting.