Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has called for greater transparency and accountability by the President of Nigeria on the management of the national economy particularly with the uncontrollable borrowing by the current government.
The Rights group said the President had told the citizens that his administration had overshot her revenue target for the year but the same federal government circulated a public notice of the decision of the government to go cap in hand to borrow from external creditors.
HURIWA, therefore, wondered what justification the government would advance for the reckless borrowing if we agree that the revenue target for the year 2025 has already been surpassed.
HIRIWA recalled that exactly on 2nd September 2025, the president, Bola Tinubu in Abuja declared that Nigeria had met its revenue target for 2025 ahead of schedule and would no longer rely on borrowing to fund its budget.
Addressing stakeholders of The Buhari Organisation who visited him at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Tinubu said his administration’s non-oil revenue drive had yielded enough to meet this year’s projections by August, reducing Nigeria’s dependence on external loans
“Today I can stand here before you to brag: Nigeria is not borrowing. We have met our revenue target for the year, and we met it in August,” Tinubu told the delegation, which included former Nasarawa State Governor, Sen. Tanko Al-Makura, and other chieftains of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Tinubu also said the exchange rate had stabilised after initial turbulence, noting that the naira had appreciated from over N1,900/$ to about N1,450/$ since he unified the foreign exchange windows last year.
HURIWA, therefore, expressed shock that on the 4th of September 2025, the Federal Government announced that it plans to increase its borrowing despite a significant 40.5 per cent surge in revenue for the first eight months of 2025. This boost in revenue has largely been driven by substantial gains in non-oil revenue collections, as confirmed in a press statement on Wednesday by Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga. HURIWA, however, accused the federal government of deception and playing a needless mind game with the citizens.
Based on the figures released by the Presidency, Nigeria’s fiscal performance from January to August 2025 saw total collections reach a record N20.59tn, surpassing the N14.6tn collected during the same period in 2024. It was noted that non-oil revenues now account for 75 per cent of the total collections.
The statement read, “From January to August 2025, total collections reached N20.59tn, a 40.5 per cent increase from N14.6tn recorded in 2024. This strong performance aligns with projections, placing the government firmly on course to achieve its annual non-oil revenue target.”
However, despite these positive developments, Nigeria still faces substantial funding gaps in crucial sectors such as infrastructure, with low capital spending. Local contractors under the All Indigenous Contractors Association of Nigeria, on Wednesday, staged a protest at the Headquarters of the Ministry of Finance in Abuja, to demand payment for capital projects executed in 2024, amounting to about N4tn.
The Rights group said in a media statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko that the contradiction in the direction of the current government’s foreign borrowing pattern, has demonstrated a yawning gap in such a way that it is impracticable for the administration to justify any claim of complying with the time -tested and time -honoured principles of good governance which are transparency and accountability.
HURIWA, which lamented that the current government has dragged Nigeria into heavy indebtedness, also cautioned that these debts are crippling the economy going by the fact that Nigeria’s debt stock is projected to reach N187.79 trillion this year just as our country grapples with a rising borrowing cost, naira depreciation, and aggressive government borrowing, it has been projected.
This is according to a recent report by Cardinalstone, an investment and research firm that revealed that the country’s debt will reach N153.04 trillion by year-end 2024.
This accumulation in debt profile, according to the report, is fueled by the issuance of a dollar-denominated domestic bond ($900.00 billion), regular borrowings through Nigeria Treasury Bills (NTBs) and bonds, and the country’s recent return to the Eurobond market to raise $2.20 billion.
“We estimate government debt to reach N187.79 trillion in 2025. The sharp rise in government debt has heightened concerns about its sustainability,” the analysts said in their report titled ‘Pressure to Plateau’.
Nigeria’s debt has surged significantly in recent quarters, climbing from N49.85 trillion before the 2023 general elections to N134.30 trillion by the end of the first half of 2024.
In a media statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko, HURIWA expressed sadness that the contradiction inherent in the manner the federal government handles the external borrowing, has made it impossible for citizens to even know when the government is telling the truth or not.
“How can you say in the morning that you have overshot the revenue target for the year, but in the evening, you announced that you will be borrowing excessively from external borrowers? This is a fallacy of the undistributed middle. The citizens want our government to be very transparent and accountable and to stop playing on the collective psyche of the citizenry. Why should the federal government play mind games with the citizens?”
