President Bola Tinubu has asked the National Assembly to approve a supplementary external borrowing plan worth $20.52 billion and €1.045 billion to finance infrastructure and development projects across Nigeria.
The proposal, covering the 2026–2027 fiscal period, was presented to the Senate on Tuesday in a letter read by Senate President Godswill Akpabio during plenary.
According to the request, the proposed borrowing comprises $20,517,755,901 and €1,045,083,643. The funds are intended to address infrastructure deficits and close financing gaps across critical sectors of the economy.
Tinubu said the proposed financing would support projects in power, transportation, health care, education, agriculture, water supply and security, as well as employment generation and public financial management reforms.
In the letter, the president urged lawmakers to consider and approve the plan promptly to facilitate the implementation of the proposed projects.
He said the initiatives had undergone technical and economic assessments and were selected based on their expected contributions to socioeconomic development, job creation, skills acquisition, entrepreneurship, poverty reduction and food security.
The president argued that the scale of Nigeria’s infrastructure needs required additional financing to bridge existing funding shortfalls and support economic growth.
The Senate has not approved the latest request. Akpabio referred the proposal to the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts for examination, with the committees on Appropriations and Finance expected to participate in the review.
Akpabio said aspects of the borrowing plan had featured in previous government budgetary and borrowing arrangements, including an earlier external borrowing framework covering 2025–2027.
He said the relevant committees would examine the latest proposal to clarify its scope and relationship with previous approvals before the Senate takes further action.
The review is expected to establish the extent to which the proposed financing represents new borrowing commitments and how it relates to existing authorisations.
The distinction is important because approval of a borrowing framework does not necessarily mean that all the funds have been raised or disbursed.
The specific lending institutions, interest rates, repayment schedules and amounts allocated to individual projects were not detailed in the initial report of the request.
The proposed borrowing comes amid a further increase in Nigeria’s public debt.
Data published by the Debt Management Office show that the country’s total public debt stood at ₦166.79 trillion as of June 30, 2026, up from ₦159.35 trillion at the end of March.
The June figure was ₦14.39 trillion higher than the ₦152.40 trillion recorded a year earlier.
Domestic obligations accounted for ₦91.59 trillion, while external debt stood at ₦75.20 trillion. The figures cover the Federal Government, state governments and the Federal Capital Territory.
The increase highlights the importance of examining the terms, intended uses and repayment implications of additional borrowing.
External loans can provide governments with financing for major infrastructure projects and other development priorities. However, they also create repayment obligations that must be managed alongside existing debt and public spending commitments.
Nigeria’s debt position therefore makes the proposed borrowing’s financing terms, project selection and expected economic returns important considerations for lawmakers.
The latest request follows earlier efforts by the Tinubu administration to secure external financing for budgetary and development needs.
In July 2025, the Senate approved an external borrowing plan exceeding $21 billion, covering financing in multiple currencies and projects across several sectors. The broader plan included provisions for federal and state government projects.
In October 2025, the National Assembly also approved a separate request for approximately $2.35 billion in external financing to help fund the 2025 budget deficit and refinance maturing Eurobonds.
These earlier approvals provide context for Akpabio’s remarks that elements of the new proposal had featured in previous borrowing arrangements. However, the precise relationship between those approvals and the latest supplementary plan requires clarification from the government and the relevant legislative committees.
The existence of previous approvals should not, by itself, be interpreted as evidence that the full amount in the latest request has already been authorised or borrowed.
The government’s reliance on borrowing also raises questions about the resources available to service existing obligations while financing new projects.
The Debt Management Office publishes periodic reports on Nigeria’s external debt-service payments, including figures for the first half of 2026. These reports provide a basis for assessing the government’s repayment commitments alongside its outstanding debt.
However, a complete assessment of the latest borrowing proposal would require the actual debt-service figures to be examined alongside projected revenue, the cost of the proposed loans and their repayment schedules.
The government has presented infrastructure investment and economic development as the principal justifications for the new financing. The proposed projects’ implementation plans and expected returns will therefore be relevant to assessing their long-term fiscal implications.
For lawmakers, the central questions include the precise terms of the proposed loans, their relationship with previous borrowing approvals, the projects to be financed and the government’s capacity to meet the resulting obligations.
The Senate committee’s review will determine the next steps in the legislative process. Until the National Assembly grants the required approval, the proposed $20.52 billion and €1.045 billion in external borrowing remains a request rather than an approved loan package.
Leave a Reply