Council on Foreign Relations posted a blog post stating that among the many dangers threatening the very foundation of the Nigerian state is the government’s increasing reliance on internal and external borrowing to finance its operations. In recent weeks, various international organizations, private entities, senior government officials, and former government functionaries have decried the Buhari administration’s appetite for borrowing and warned about the risk to the Nigerian state of allowing the situation to get out of hand. It goes without saying that the Nigerian economy has taken a hit from the combined fallout of the COVID-19 epidemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A study by IFPRI estimates that the pandemic accounted for “a 14-percentage point temporary increase in the poverty headcount rate for Nigeria, implying that 27 million additional people fell below the poverty line during the lockdown.”
