Nigeria has rejected a World Bank finding that its debt-interest payments reached $5.8 billion in the first half of 2026, equivalent to 124% of federal revenue.
In a statement issued on October 18, the Nigerian Finance Ministry said that the World Bank’s October 2026 Nigeria Development Update compared federal interest payments with revenue that excluded earnings already generated by government agencies and enterprises but not yet remitted to the Treasury.
It also said the debt figure included external loans taken by states but serviced by the federal government.
The ministry argued that first-half revenue is an unreliable measure of annual fiscal capacity because several taxes are collected on statutory schedules concentrated later in the year. It noted that Nigeria’s full-year debt-service-to-revenue ratio fell below 60% in 2025, down from 97% before President Bola Tinubu’s reforms.
According to the ministry, federal revenue rose 72% year on year, from $2.71 billion in the first half of 2025 to $4.67 billion in the same period of 2026. Interest payments rose 38%, from $4.22 billion to $5.80 billion, narrowing the shortfall between interest and revenue from $1.51 billion to $1.13 billion.
It said the interest-to-revenue ratio consequently declined by 32 percentage points, from 156% in the first half of 2025 to 124% in the first half of 2026.
However, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu welcomed the report, saying that the World Bank findings confirmed that the difficult but necessary decisions to remove the petrol subsidy had stabilized the economy, among other benefits.
He cited World Bank findings that internally generated revenue grew in real terms in 31 of 35 states, while Nigeria’s public debt is projected to decline from 40.0% of GDP in 2025 to 38.1% in 2026.
The World Bank’s report nonetheless projects that Nigeria’s total 2026 debt service, including interest and principal repayments, will equal 46% of revenue.
