Tinubu’s Borrowing Binge Is Becoming Reckless – Atiku

Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has expressed sadness at reports that President Bola Tinubu is in discussions with the World Bank for another $1.25 billion loan facility. He recently had his say via a press statement by one of his media aides, Olusola Sanni, and Nigerians have been reacting.

Describing the present administration’s appetite for foreign debt as reckless and dangerously habitual, Atiku said that watching BAT’s government become synonymous with industrial-scale borrowing, despite promising economic renewal as president, is very troubling.

He added that seeing no corresponding improvement in the daily lives of Nigerians makes the whole idea of constant borrowing extremely needless.

His words, “This borrowing binge is becoming reckless, opaque and dangerously habitual. The loans are coming with a burden of weight too heavy for Nigerians to bear. Nigerians were told these loans were for infrastructure, power, and economic recovery. Yet the average citizen still lives in darkness, roads remain death traps, businesses are collapsing under crushing energy costs, and hunger has become a national epidemic.

The IDA loans are facilities granted to extremely poor countries and currently shares the same spot with Bangladesh and Pakistan as top countries in the world with highest loan exposure to the World Bank. This data is diametrically opposed to claims by the Tinubu administration that the government had increased its revenue generation drive.

It is deeply ironic that the same nation which painstakingly exited the Paris Club debt trap through the fiscal discipline, diplomatic credibility, and reform-driven leadership of the Obasanjo-Atiku administration in 2005–2006 is now being dragged back into a fresh era of debt dependency. That historic debt relief was not accidental. It was earned through tough negotiations, prudent management, and international goodwill. Today, that legacy is being squandered with alarming irresponsibility.

This administration appears to believe that borrowing is governance. It is not. Loans are not achievements. Debt is not development. And mortgaging the future of unborn Nigerians to fund present incompetence is not economic management — it is economic vandalism.

No responsible lender should ignore the warning signs. A government that keeps borrowing while citizens see no tangible improvement in electricity supply, healthcare, education, or infrastructure raises legitimate concerns about fiscal credibility and governance discipline. At some point, creditors must ask themselves whether they are funding development or enabling dysfunction.”

WOW.