By Olusola Sanni
Let us picture a typical Nigerian middle-class family in 2023.
The family’s monthly take-home pay was ₦1 million. That amount was enough to stock the food pantry, pay children’s school fees, service the mortgage or rent, and still cover household bills with some breathing space.
Three years later, in 2026, that same ₦1 million take-home remains unchanged — yet it is now barely enough to cover feeding alone.
There was no war. There was no famine. There was no natural disaster.
What happened was a deliberate political choice.
It was the choice of a leadership that turned the systematic reduction of citizens’ purchasing power into state policy. A leadership that removed critical subsidies without adequate safeguards, floated the naira in a chaotic manner, triggered runaway inflation, and simultaneously embarked on an aggressive binge of long-term foreign borrowing.
The consequences are brutal and long-lasting: a once-comfortable salary has been reduced to mere survival money, while the mountain of debt being accumulated today will keep the entire populace trapped in poverty for generations to come.
This is not economic reform.
This is economic sabotage by design.
And so, by the time Nigerians go to the polls in 2027, the most damning indictment against President Bola Tinubu’s administration may not be any single scandal — but the mountain of debt he is piling on future generations while ordinary citizens continue to endure unprecedented hardship.
Since May 2023, the Tinubu administration has embarked on an unprecedented borrowing spree from the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. These loans have come under various labels — infrastructure, power sector recovery, economic stabilisation — yet the promised dividends remain largely invisible to the average Nigerian.
Electricity supply is still epileptic. Roads remain death traps. Businesses are folding under crushing energy and forex costs. Hunger has become a national emergency, with food inflation refusing to yield despite official claims of “reforms.”
Nigerians were told these loans would fix the fundamentals. Instead, what we have seen is a government that treats borrowing as a substitute for governance. Debt is not development. Loans are not achievements. And mortgaging the future of unborn Nigerians to paper over present incompetence is not economic management — it is fiscal vandalism of the highest order.
The Tinubu administration has repeatedly boasted about improved revenue generation. Yet the data tells a different story. Nigeria now sits alongside Bangladesh and Pakistan among the World Bank’s largest borrowers — countries still classified as extremely poor.
What is more appalling is that a major component of the loans flow into projects being executed without public procurement protocols by a certain company where the president and his family have vested interests.
Meanwhile, the International Development Association (IDA) loans meant for the poorest nations are being gulped down at record pace, without any tangible impact on ground, even as the government claims it is “growing the economy.”
This is not just hypocritical; it is tragic.
It was the Obasanjo-Atiku administration in 2005–2006 that painstakingly negotiated Nigeria out of the Paris Club debt trap through fiscal discipline and credible reforms. That historic debt relief was earned, not given. Today, that hard-won legacy is being squandered at alarming speed. Between May 2023 and now, the Tinubu government has secured massive external loans whose implementation and impact are difficult for ordinary citizens to verify.
The deeper tragedy lies in the everyday consequences of these policies.
The abrupt removal of fuel subsidies without adequate safety nets triggered a cost-of-living crisis that is still raging. The naira float, coupled with the burden of increased taxation, while ideologically appealing to some market fundamentalists, has unleashed runaway inflation that has wiped out savings, devastated small businesses, and pushed millions deeper into poverty, while the government looks away. Debt servicing alone is now projected to consume more than half of government revenue in 2026 — leaving precious little for actual development or palliatives.
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When a government borrows heavily yet citizens see no improvement in power, healthcare, education, or security, the social contract begins to fray. Nigerians are not asking for miracles. They are simply asking: where is the money going?
With the 2027 presidential election few months away, the political math is becoming brutally clear.
Economic hardship is the single biggest voter grievance in Nigeria. No amount of media spin by government proxies under various banners like Renewed Hope Ambassadors, City Boys Movement and the rest can mask the daily reality faced by millions. Empty stomachs, mounting school fees, unaffordable transport, and businesses on the brink are the major issue on the ballot in the elections in January next year.
Voters have long memories. They remember the promises of “Renewed Hope.” They also remember the reality: more debt, more suffering, and very little visible progress. The opposition is already weaponising this narrative, and with every new loan announcement, the administration hands them fresh ammunition.
No incumbent survives re-election when the dominant story is “they borrowed our future and delivered poverty.” The Tinubu team can point to GDP figures or revenue numbers all they want, but when citizens cannot afford basic food items or reliable electricity, those numbers feel like insults.
Olusola Sanni is media aide to former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar
