Nigeria's Federal Government borrowed ₦12.62 trillion in 2024, exceeding the ₦7.83 trillion approved by the National Assembly by ₦4.79 trillion, or 61%, as weak oil revenue and persistent expenditure overruns forced the government to raise significantly more financing than it had planned, the Budget Office of the Federation has disclosed in its latest report.
The overshoot pushed the 2024 fiscal deficit to ₦13.51 trillion, well above the approved ₦9.18 trillion. New borrowings of ₦12.62 trillion against the budgeted ₦7.83 trillion represented a 61% excess, driven largely by shortfalls in oil revenue, with crude averaging below the benchmark throughout the year, and non-oil collections falling short of targets.
The Budget Office also confirmed that total public debt rose to ₦144.67 trillion at the end of December 2024, with the debt-to-GDP ratio climbing to 61.22%, exceeding both Nigeria's self-imposed threshold of 40% and the international benchmark of 56% for comparable economies. In other words, Nigeria's government has not just exceeded its annual borrowing target. It has breached its own medium-term debt ceiling, and has done so in a disclosure that arrives as the 2026 fiscal year shows even more aggressive borrowing underway.
Between January and May 2026 alone, the Federal Government issued ₦11.4 trillion in Treasury bills, the highest amount ever recorded in five months, while credit to the government from the banking system surged 75.6% year-on-year in May 2026, nearly doubling from ₦23 trillion in May 2025. The Debt Management Office is simultaneously seeking advisers for a Eurobond issuance under the 2026 external borrowing programme, and President Tinubu had in March 2026 written to the National Assembly seeking approval for a further $6 billion in external borrowing.
The structural arithmetic behind the numbers is unambiguous and has not improved. Gross FAAC revenue increased from ₦17.08 trillion in 2023 to ₦37.44 trillion in 2025, a 119% increase, while total public debt rose from ₦97.34 trillion to ₦159.28 trillion over the same period, up 64%. But in cash terms, debt expanded by ₦61.94 trillion against a revenue increase of ₦20.36 trillion, meaning that every additional naira of revenue the government earned was matched by three nairas of new debt.
Debt service is projected at ₦15.81 trillion in 2026, roughly 45% of projected revenue and 23% of total spending, though projections have consistently underestimated the actual service burden: by the third quarter of 2025, debt service had already reached ₦12.52 trillion against revenue of ₦18.63 trillion, a ratio of 67.2%.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar described the administration's borrowing as reckless, opaque and dangerously habitual, while pointing out that higher international crude prices had generated an estimated ₦7.98 trillion oil revenue windfall for the Federal Government in the same period, asking why a government earning windfalls was still borrowing at record pace. Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele has maintained that the headline debt increase reflects naira depreciation applied to foreign-currency obligations and that productive borrowing at returns above the cost of capital is rational financial management.
What the Budget Office data makes clear is that Nigeria is not approaching a self-reinforcing debt cycle; it is already inside one: the government borrows to cover the deficit, debt service consumes the revenue, the shortfall forces more borrowing, and each new loan adds to next year's service bill. The 2024 overshoot of 61% is not the beginning of this story. It is the latest data point in a pattern that has repeated without interruption since 2020, and the 2026 figures, on the current trajectory, are on course to set a new record on both the absolute borrowing level and the margin by which the approved ceiling is exceeded.
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