N130 trillion.

That's the estimated credit requirement for Nigeria's 39 million small businesses. The country's development finance institutions have about N8 trillion in assets. The gap between those two numbers is N122 trillion.

To feel what N130 trillion means, don't try to picture the number. Picture what happens without it. Fewer than one in twenty Nigerian small businesses has access to formal bank credit. MSMEs account for 96% of all Nigerian businesses, 48% of GDP, and 84% of private sector employment. They are the economy. And the economy can't borrow.

That's not because banks don't have money. They have plenty. Nigerian banks channelled over N20 trillion into government securities in the last two years. Treasury bills, bonds, fixed-income instruments. Risk-free returns, zero exposure to a Lagos caterer or a Kano farmer.

The reason the caterer and the farmer can't borrow isn't that there's no money in the system. It's that the system was never built to reach them. N130 trillion is just the precise distance between the economy that exists and the economy that could.