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•Says govt borrowed N24.7trn in eight months despite oil windfall
•Private sector being crowded out of credit market, he alleges
From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has accused the Federal Government of crowding Nigerian businesses out of the credit market through what he described as its “unprecedented appetite” for domestic borrowing.
Atiku said the trend was making credit more expensive for businesses, stifling investment and job creation and ultimately worsening the cost-of-living crisis.
The former vice president, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, expressed concern that the President Bola Tinubu administration had continued to borrow at what he called a “frightening pace”, despite crude oil prices rising above the benchmark on which the 2026 budget was predicated.
He said the 2026 budget was based on an oil benchmark of $64.85 per barrel, arguing that higher crude prices should ordinarily have translated into increased revenue and reduced pressure on government borrowing.
“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,” he said.
Atiku questioned why borrowing had continued to rise despite the removal of petrol subsidy, foreign exchange reforms and improved oil revenues.
“This is not fiscal management. 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. So, the question Nigerians must ask again is very simple: where is the money going?” The ADC candidate said the greater danger was the impact of government borrowing on access to credit by businesses, citing figures which he said showed that credit to government grew by 43 per cent, compared with 9.6 per cent for the private sector.
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According to him, this meant government credit was expanding about 4.5 times faster than lending to businesses, a development he described as another indication that the administration’s economic reforms were not delivering the expected benefits to the productive sector.
“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. 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.” Atiku said attractive returns on government securities provided banks with little incentive to extend cheaper loans to businesses considered riskier.
“When banks can lend to 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.” He argued that the government was “not merely borrowing money; it is borrowing away the future of Nigerian businesses,” warning that the economy could not achieve sustainable growth if government continued to absorb credit that should finance productive activities.
“An economy grows when businesses borrow to build factories, farmers borrow to expand production and entrepreneurs access affordable capital to create jobs — not when government becomes the biggest and most voracious customer in the banking hall,” he said.
Atiku pledged that, if elected, his administration would impose fiscal discipline, cut waste, prioritise productive expenditure and progressively reduce government’s dependence on the domestic credit market.
“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 said.
