Market News

by  Success Nwogu

The amount of money Nigeria has borrowed from the World Bank is not only putting the country in a difficult state within the neoliberal community but also mortgaging the future of present and unborn generations, Programme Director , Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria Foundation (CLEEN), Dr. Salaudeen Hashim, has said.

As at December 2024, it was reported that Nigeria owed the global lender a total of $17.81 billion. Available reports show that President Bola Ahmed’s administration, within its first 20 months, secured a total of $8.6 billion from the World Bank, which translates to about N13.2 trillion.

Also in March 31, 2025, the World Bank announced that it had approved three operations in Nigeria, totaling $1.08 billion in concessional financing, to enhance education quality, build household and community resilience, and improve nutrition for underserved groups.

It added that this included $500 million in additional financing for: Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) Program, $80 million for Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria ANRIN 2.0), and $500 million for Hope for Quality Basic Education for All (HOPE-EDU).

Hashim, who is also a policy analyst and public commentator, in an interview with New Telegraph over the weekend, called on the Federal Government to review its penchant for loans. He added that the government should explore other financing models including growing the non-oil sector.

He also said it was important to harness, develop and maximise the nation’s abundant mineral resources including mining potential. He warned that some, if not all of those loans had stringent conditionalities.

Hashim said: “These mounting loans actually put us in a difficult state within the neoliberal community. Neoliberal agenda is to continue to colonise local economies using these offers.

And I think it is very important for the President and his team, to also review that and look at it, vis-a-vis what are the alternatives that are available.

“I think for me, it is actually to grow non-oil investment as a way of expanding this value chain, because if we continue to put our energy around this loan, it actually makes the minds of our political elites to be lazy.

It, therefore, means that we will just be waiting for those pledges as an opportunity to escape. “But we need to find an economy that helps us to advance our creativity. And that must come with technology and come with how we use our local resources.

We have untapped risk mines. “We have a lot of natural resources beyond oil. The mining industry is only going to commercialise and explore the way through.

I think it is very important that we put a lot of energy around this so that we don’t have to consistently go borrowing because we will continue to become slaves in the global economy.”

He added: “We are mortgaging the future of generations yet unborn by these loans because what is happen – ing is that we are coerced with some kind of conditionality that takes a whole lot of time before we escape.