By Suyi Ayodele
Reasonable people borrow for production; we borrow to fund contracts of bloated values!
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Lord Polonius is heard advising Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan yes-men oft loses both itself and friend”.
Shakespeare is saying here that borrowing does no help; that what it does is to damage the financial situation of the borrower and his friendship with the lender. More tragically, it ruins, as Polonius further advises, “And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Husbandry here suggests innovation and deep thinking. Borrowing kills both.
Why work hard to make money when you can borrow and default in payment? You can read that again!
One of the reasons why poverty walks the streets of Nigeria in a three-piece suit is the reckless way the government borrows money to fund corruption and consumption. Unfortunately, our National Assembly under the watch of Godswill Akpabio is readily available to approve anything from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. As we get suffocated with the previous loans, Akpabio and his gang are there to approve more loans!
For instance, in a recent article by the Economy Post on Nigeria’s indebtedness under the current administration, President Tinubu is said to have borrowed N56.6 trillion in his first 23 months in office. The article says: “… is N18.7 trillion or 75.2 percent less than N75.26 trillion loans taken by former President Muhammadu Buhari in the whole of 8 years. Under President Tinubu, Nigeria’s public debt has jumped from N87.379 trillion as at June 2023 (one month after Mr Buhari’s exit from power) to N142.319 trillion as at September 2024. The debt reached N144.67 trillion ($94.23 billion) in December 2024. With the World Bank’s approval of a fresh $1.08bn loan to Nigeria to support education, nutrition, and economic resilience in the country, the total public debt is now above N144.67 trillion, which is a worry to financial experts.”
And when one tries to draw the attention of the government to this alarming situation, the usual refrain from those in power is that Tinubu inherited a badly managed economy from Buhari! What escapism! Who is deceiving who here?
Last Tuesday, May 29, was a frenzy day in Nigeria. It was the day the administration of President Tinubu turned two years old. The political class did not disappoint. Government hangers-on, favour-seekers and lackeys alike tried all they could to outdo one another. Praise-singing the ‘performing’ President was not in short supply! President Tinubu, no doubt, savoured the occasion. You can’t blame him. Who wouldn’t, given the gullibility of the blind followership system we have here? Nigeria is a cruise, let us eat our popcorn and lick our ice cream. That’s how we roll!
Some state governors also enjoyed the moments as their praises were sung into high heaven. If we were to go by the celebrations, Nigeria should be a paradise on earth. But it is not; Nigeria shares borders with the hot hell, going by the palpable pain on the streets! If all the praises showered on President Tinubu were true, why then the pain in the land?
I read some comments from some people in the government. I listened to a few praise-singing from those who are close to those in government. Nothing confirms the paddy -paddy nature of the government of the day more than the drums rolled out for the President and the state governors that day. It is, as a multi-billionaire I know is wont to say, ‘a case of someone helping someone.’ Sycophancy has never been scarce here, we have more than enough of it!
The biggest lesson for me in it all is in the saying of our elders, to wit: Àrùn tó ún se Lémibájé kó ló ún se omo rè, Lémibájé ún sunkún owó, omo rè ún sunkún oko – what ails Lémibájé is different from what ails her daughter, while Lémibájé cries over lack of money, her daughter laments her lack of a husband. We don’t suffer the same ailment with our leaders.
Truth be told, our leaders are far away from the reality of the situation of the people they claim to lead. The Aso Rock Villa and other Government Houses across the country are simply too impregnable; too impenetrable for the occupants to feel the heat on the Nigerian streets. Aso Rock Villa is too soundproof to hear the agony from the streets.
The BusinessDay of that same May 29, 2025, ran its Editorial on the topic: “Nigeria’s Electricity crisis is a national Security Threat.” Above the Editorial was the paper’s cartoon for the day. The cartoon tells more graphically, the attitude of President Tinubu to the litany of woes confronting the nation under his watch.
The cartoon is the caricature of the President watering a flower bed with the inscription: “2027.” Behind him is a house branded “Nigeria”, on fire. Rather than stretch the water hose to combat the conflagration ravaging the Nigeria House, the President is seen watering his 2027 second term bid! For all that matters, Nigeria can burn as long as the second term of the President is secured!
That is exactly what is happening in the country today. Governance has receded to the back seat. The Villa is no longer interested in what is happening to the masses. In all the states of the Federation where the governors are in their first term, their attention has shifted from governance to their second term ambitions. Ambition is, indeed, the last refuge of failure!
This is the season of endorsements. This is the season of rent-a-crowd support pulling devices. The level of political ‘realignment’ or ‘reengineering’ is alarming! Governors, senators, federal legislators and members of the states houses of assembly are falling over one another as they move from their opposition parties to the President’s ruling party. In all, President Tinubu is playing God! His aides and supporters are telling him that his ‘good’ works are attracting the opposition to his fold. Who will tell him the truth?
But the reality on the streets is alarming. Nigerians are going down by the seconds as poverty keeps shooting arrows of economic depletion at them. The masses are not just at the receiving end of the malady going on in the political circles. They are the victims of the insensitivity of the locusts in power. There appears to be no solution in sight. We are hooked!
Yet, Tinubu cares less. Rather than being sober, he is taking the ‘battle’ to his ‘enemies’ and ‘perceived enemies.’ Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State was the president’s latest victim. You need to watch the video of how the President openly embarrassed the Lagos State governor at the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway event over the weekend! Nothing can be more condescending, nothing can be more unstatesmanlike! But nothing spoils; that is why Tinubu is Tinubu!
While the President thinks of himself as the best thing to happen to Nigeria and his Hallelujah orchestra are drawing the cord of the harp in his praise, those managing our economy are saying the obvious; Nigeria is going down the drain! What do I mean?
Get a copy of the Nigerian Tribune of Monday, June 2, 2025. Read the screaming headline: “Manufactures lament mounting challenges.” Check out the riders: “Say 767 manufacturing companies shutdown in 2023”, “Over 18,000 jobs lost in 2024”, “Cost of imported materials surged by 118%” and “Spending on alternative energy hit N1.11trn in 2024.” Then weep for our dear fatherland.
Segun Ajayi-Kadir, the Director-General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), who gave the alarming figures at the Businessday Manufacturing 2025 Conference held in Lagos, said that apart from the exchange rate depreciation in 2024 by 53 percent, manufacturers paid a whopping sum of N76.64 trillion in 2024 to import raw materials, an amount he calculated to be an increase of 118 percent from the 2023 figure!
The manufacturing sector, Ajayi-Kadir lamented, “…is now facing the combined storm of FX losses, rising raw material costs, high energy prices, multiple taxation, escalated borrowing costs, infrastructural deficits and policy uncertainties”, adding that “It is not surprising that the sector’s growth has been on a decline for years, falling to 1.40 per cent in 2023 and further dropping to 1.38 per cent in 2024. The sector’s quarter-on-quarter growth reflects a similarly negative trend.”
The above and many more that the MAN boss mentioned are the true report cards of President Tinubu, the media razzmatazz of his second year in office notwithstanding! The Presidency may live in self-delusion; the suffering masses can feel the heat. If “767 manufacturing companies shut down in 2023”, one can imagine the numbers that joined the league in 2024 and what to expect in the current year. It is a sad situation, only the President doesn’t know that!
We are still waiting for the Vuvuzelas in government to tell us that it is not true that factories and other business ventures spent N1.11trn in 2024 to source for alternative energy when Aso Rock Villa itself is on the verge of spending N10 billion on solar power for the President and his family living in the presidential quarters!
That is the level of insensitivity we have in this era. How it never occurred to the policy maker that such a venture is an open declaration of lack of trust in the National grid beats one’s imagination! How the Presidency failed to realise that the simple message in that singular act is an open resignation to fate and a signal to the populace that all is lost with the National Grid, is another low for the government.
Nigeria did not get to this parlous state in one day. Not even in one decade. It is also not true that the present administration of President Tinubu is the sole cause of our woes. The bitter truth, however, is that this government and the immediate one before it, have taken the nation deeper into the bottomless pit of penury!
It doesn’t matter the number of spin doctors out there defending the present administration, those in government, in their few sober moments, know that they have done more damage to the nation’s economy than any other person before them!
Unfortunately for the supporters of the government, the figures are there to show that no government has been this brazen, tactless and reckless as the Tinubu administration in formulating pain-inflicting policies. That the president gets away with all the shenanigans going on in his administration and is most likely to get away with more clueless policies will not change that!
The Economy Post’s piece in reference here situates the issue properly when it submits that: “However, while Mr Tinubu’s debt has been monumental, the effect of naira devaluation cannot be ignored. President Tinubu has taken some external loans from the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other multilateral financial institutions. But that is at a time the naira exchange rate has weakened against other major currencies.
“As at the time President Buhari was leaving power by late May 2023, the exchange rate was less than N800/$. Data from FMDQ Securities Exchange showed that the naira exchanged at N775/$ on May 26, 2023. Mr Tinubu came to power on May 29, 2023. Hence some of former President Buhari’s external loans were taken when a dollar exchanged at less than N800. However, President Tinubu has taken some of his loans at a point when the naira exchange rate is at over 1,500 to a dollar. The naira was quoted at 1,552.53 to a dollar on Thursday at the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market (NFEM), according to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In fact, the naira has weakened by over 70 percent since May 29, 2023, when Mr Tinubu came to power…”
Read full text on www.tribuneonlineng.com
The summary of the Economy Post’s article is that President Tinubu should stop the blame game, wake up and smell the coffee of poverty his administration is brewing for the poor masses to drink! He who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing, goes the saying. The Presidency should allow that to sink.
Even as I penned this, the President had transmitted another set of requests to borrow to the pliable National Assembly. The new requests amount to N34.15 trillion in external and domestic loans. And guess what the loans are meant to address; a domestic bond issuance of N757.9 billion to settle outstanding pension liabilities and a new external borrowing plan of over $21.5 billion, (N33.39 trillion)! at the official exchange rate of N1,590 per dollar.
By the time the approvals come, Nigeria’s public debt, analysts said, would exceed N180 trillion! For a government that recently ‘celebrated’ a great feat of paying off the nation’s IMF loan, one begins to wonder if President Tinubu’s mission is to make poverty go global, as they say in our street lingo!
The most damaging part of the Economy Post’s piece on the Tinubu’s penchant for loans is the aspect where the article dwells on the Nigeria’s total debt, where it submits that the “Nigeria’s total public debt increased to N142.3 trillion as of September 30, 2024, representing an increase of 5.97 percent (N8.02tn) from N134.3 trillion seen in June 2024.
“Data from the Debt Management Office (DMO) showed that external debt in dollar terms increased from $42.90 billion in June to $43.03 billion in September 2024. However, the total sum has not factored in Mr. Tinibu’s recent loans, especially from the global lender, the World Bank.”
If the people in my place were to give a befitting name to President Tinubu and his followers as they are clinking wine cups in celebration of the President’s two years in office amidst soaring debts, they will simply be christened: Amúgbèsèsewà – he who uses debts as ornaments!
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
