Nigerian presidency disputes claim Tinubu borrowed 120 trillion naira
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Punch
The Nigerian presidency rejects claims that President Bola Tinubu borrowed 120 trillion naira in three years. According to Dada Olusegun, the president's adviser on social media, dollar-denominated public debt increased by only $7.5 billion, from $113.4 billion in June 2023 to $120.9 billion in June 2026, according to Punch.
The Nigerian presidency has described as misleading claims that President Bola Tinubu borrowed 120 trillion naira in three years while also scrapping the fuel subsidy. In a statement published on Sunday on X, Dada Olusegun, the president's special assistant on social media, attributed the figures to the “opposition's propaganda machines”, the Nigerian media outlet Punch reports.
According to him, the figure of 46 trillion naira presented as the cumulative debt of 16 leaders over 63 years concealed 22.7 trillion naira in overdrafts under the Central Bank's “Ways and Means” mechanism, which were only officially entered in the budget in May 2023. He added that previous calculations converted external debt at an exchange rate of 448 naira to the dollar, while the parallel rate exceeded 700 naira; the unification of the exchange rate in June 2023 made the same dollar debt appear 13.4 trillion naira higher on paper, without any new borrowing. In real terms, Nigeria's public debt rose from $113.4 billion in June 2023 to $120.9 billion in June 2026, an increase of $7.5 billion.
On the subsidy, Dada Olusegun said its removal increased the monthly amounts distributed to states and local authorities by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) from 656 billion naira in April 2023 to 2.4 trillion in September 2026. The disputed figures come from a viral infographic comparing the indebtedness of previous governments with that of the Tinubu administration. Nigeria's total public debt stood at about 87.38 trillion naira ($113.4 billion) in June 2023 and 166.79 trillion naira ($120.93 billion) in June 2026, according to the Debt Management Office.
