Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, on Monday described the federal government’s ‘unprecedented’ appetite for domestic borrowing as evidence of dangerous fiscal indiscipline that is starving Nigerian businesses of credit, killing jobs and worsening the cost-of-living crisis.
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said it was particularly alarming that the Bola Tinubu administration continues to borrow at such a frightening pace at a time when crude oil prices have risen substantially above the assumptions upon which the 2026 budget was built.
“At the beginning of this fiscal year, the federal government budgeted on an oil benchmark of $64.85 per barrel. Today, crude oil prices have risen substantially above that benchmark.
“Yet, instead of this windfall translating into lower borrowing, stronger businesses and relief for Nigerians, the federal government went into the domestic market and borrowed a staggering N24.7 trillion between January and August 2026 — 90.5 per cent more than the N12.98 trillion borrowed in the corresponding period of 2025.
‘’This is a government borrowing like drunken sailors in the middle of a revenue windfall. Tinubu removed fuel subsidy and told Nigerians the sacrifice would free up money. He floated the naira and government revenues consequently received a massive nominal boost. Oil prices have risen sharply. Revenues have improved. Yet the borrowing has not gone down — it has exploded,” the former vice president stressed.
According to him, Nigerians must begin to ask what the money saved fromfuel subsidy has been spent on.
“What makes this recklessness even more damaging is that the government is now competing directly with Nigerian businesses for money. Credit to the government grew by 43 per cent, while credit to the private sector grew by only 9.6 per cent. Government credit is expanding about 4.5 times faster than credit to businesses.
“This is yet another troubling signal that the Tinubu economic reforms have failed to produce any meaningful impact on the private sector,’’ Atiku added.
Atiku said that ordinarily, the outlook and performance of the private sector should serve as one of the clearest yardsticks for measuring the effectiveness of government economic policy.
He said: ‘’If businesses are expanding, investing, hiring and gaining easier access to capital, then reform can claim some measure of success.
“But under Tinubu’s economic policy, the exact opposite is happening. The public sector is exerting an increasingly parasitic effect on the private sector — consuming the credit, capital and financial oxygen that productive businesses desperately need. That, at a glance, is one of the clearest indictments of the failure of these so-called reforms.
“When banks can lend to the government at attractive, risk-free rates, why would they lend cheaply to the manufacturer in Aba, the furniture maker in Kaduna, the agro-processor in Kano or the young entrepreneur in Lagos?
“The result is obvious: businesses pay more for credit, expansion is postponed, factories struggle, jobs disappear and the cost of producing everything from food to household goods rises. This government is not merely borrowing money; it is borrowing away the future of Nigerian businesses.”
He stated that Nigeria cannot achieve prosperity by allowing the government to swallow the credit that should finance production, stressing that an economy grows when businesses borrow to build factories, farmers borrow to expand production and entrepreneurs access affordable capital to create jobs.
“My administration will impose fiscal discipline, cut waste, prioritiseproductive expenditure and progressively reduce the government’s suffocating dependence on the domestic credit market.
The government must make room for the private sector to breathe, invest, produce and employ.
“After three years of sacrifice, Nigerians deserve to see what happened to the subsidy savings, the additional revenues and the crude-oil windfall. You cannot collect more, earn more and still borrow more — while asking hungry Nigerians to sacrifice more. Something is fundamentally wrong with that equation,” he argued.
Meanwhile, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on Monday alleged that the Auditor-General’s finding that N33.75 billion in cash transfers to 3.29 million households cannot be verified was proof that under Tinubu, social investment had become a racket run for the benefit of officials, not the poor.
In a statement, ADC’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, stated: “Let us call this what it is. Not mismanagement. Not an oversight. It is an organised racket, which this government has run under the guise of a social intervention programme. They are stealing from the poor and telling them to continue to endure hardship.
“This latest report of an unaccounted N33.75 billion intervention fund, buried inside a larger N78 billion fund, and the historical pattern of corruption that has trailed this kind of programme would suggest that this government has found a way to steal from the poor by turning the social intervention programme into a criminal enterprise,” the party stated.
Abdullahi said instead of the federal government addressing the wanton corruption associated with such interventions in the past, it has announced an even bigger package of $1 billion without demonstrating that it has made any effort to ensure greater transparency and accountability.
“Barely weeks before this audit blew up in their faces, they wheeled out a new $1 billion so-called ‘Renewed Hope Social Protection Programme’ with the usual State House fanfare. Given the familiar history, we are in no doubt that even in the unlikely event that this latest intervention is ever implemented, it would end up like the others before it: another racket.”
While demanding a full probe into the scheme, the ADC noted that interventions such as this became necessary because the APC government has made it impossible for people to earn a dignified living.
“Their twin disastrous policies of fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation have exploded the population of Nigerians living in extreme poverty and therefore needing cash handouts from the government, which has now become a mere pretext for stealing in the name of the poor.
“This is a government that manufactured hardship with one hand and pocketed the relief with the other. Fuel prices up. Transport costs up. Food prices up. And the one programme meant to soften the blow turns out to be a black hole. Enough is enough,” it added.
The party, therefore, demanded the immediate publication of the full beneficiary register, the REMITA payment trail, and the names of every official who obstructed the auditor-general.
Chuks Okocha
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