1000REASONS.VOTE · REASON NO. 501
Nigeria owes ₦159.27trn. The last of it is scheduled to be paid off in 2063. Enter your birth year to see what that means for you.
No. 02 · Register of the bearer
Federal Republic of Nigeria
Awaiting particulars of the bearer. Enter a birth year above; the certificate is drawn up from the Debt Management Office’s own instrument records.
No. 03 · Register of Creditors
The thicker the rule under a name, the more Nigeria owes them. The last one is the strangest. Nigeria owes a fifth of this debt to its own central bank.
Nigeria borrows more from the World Bank than any other African country. Only Bangladesh and Pakistan borrow more worldwide. The loans are cheap, but they run 30 to 40 years. A loan signed in 2025 is repaid into the 2060s, long after everyone now in government is gone.
Source: DMO via Nairametrics, May 2026
15 dollar bonds sold to foreign investors, at 6.125% to 10.375% interest. Between late 2023 and mid 2025, Nigeria paid them $2.93bn. 83% of that was interest alone.
Source: DMO Eurobond trading sheets, Jun 2026
Cheap project loans. The stock rose from $3.2bn in 2023 to $3.9bn in 2025.
Source: DMO via Nairametrics, May 2026
Eleven China Exim loans built the Abuja–Kaduna and Lagos–Ibadan railways, four airport terminals, the Zungeru dam and the NPSCS surveillance system, at 2.5% over 20 years. Those are slowly being paid down. Newer loans from China Development Bank, France, India, Japan and Germany are still growing.
Source: DMO / AidData china.aiddata.org
Commercial loans arranged by the Africa Finance Corporation, on market terms. They grew from $270m to $2.51bn under Tinubu. Almost nobody reports on them.
Source: DMO via Nairametrics, May 2026
Nigerian pension funds and banks hold FGN bonds and treasury bills at 9% to 20%+ interest. In 2025, Nigeria paid them ₦8.24trn in interest and retired only ₦370.93bn of actual debt. 96 kobo of every naira went to interest.
Source: DMO Q3 2025 / ThisDay, May 2026
The central bank printed money for the government from 2015 to 2023, beyond what the law allows. The National Assembly turned it into 40-year bonds at 9%. A fifth of Nigeria’s debt is owed to its own central bank, for money no one ever lent.
Source: National Assembly May 2023 / Nairametrics Dec 2023
This counts only debt already on the books. See No. 07 for what Nigeria has approved since.
No. 04 · The Repayment Schedule
25 debts are outstanding today. Each line starts when the money came in and ends when it is paid off. The red rule is today. Everything to its right is still owed.
| Instrument | Amount | Rate | Until | Repayment timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020s | ||||
| Eurobond JUL 2023 (repaid)pre-2015 serial NG-EB-2023-3367 · status: paid | $0.50bn | 5.125% | 2023 | |
| Eurobond NOV 2025 (repaid)Buhari serial NG-EB-2025-6937 · status: paid | $1.118bn | 7.625% | 2025 | |
| Eurobond NOV 2027Buhari serial NG-EB-2027-4513 · status: outstanding | $1.50bn | 6.500% | 2027 | |
| Eurobond SEP 2028Buhari serial NG-EB-2028-8453 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 6.125% | 2028 | |
| Eurobond MAR 2029Buhari serial NG-EB-2029-2526 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 8.375% | 2029 | |
| IMF Rapid Financing InstrumentBuhari serial NG-IMF-2029-2408 · status: paid | $3.40bn | ~1% + SDR charges | 2029 | |
| 2030s | ||||
| Eurobond FEB 2030Buhari serial NG-EB-2030-9375 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 7.143% | 2030 | |
| AFC-arranged syndicated facilityTinubu serial NG-AFC-2030-8589 · status: outstanding | $2.51bn | commercial | 2030 | |
| Eurobond JAN 2031Buhari serial NG-EB-2031-9560 · status: outstanding | $1.00bn | 8.747% | 2031 | |
| Eurobond JUN 2031Tinubu serial NG-EB-2031-8700 · status: outstanding | $0.70bn | 9.625% | 2031 | |
| Eurobond FEB 2032Buhari serial NG-EB-2032-4613 · status: outstanding | $1.50bn | 7.875% | 2032 | |
| Eurobond SEP 2033Buhari serial NG-EB-2033-2157 · status: outstanding | $1.50bn | 7.375% | 2033 | |
| Eurobond DEC 2034Tinubu serial NG-EB-2034-6116 · status: outstanding | $1.50bn | 10.375% | 2034 | |
| Eurobond JAN 2036Tinubu serial NG-EB-2036-2893 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 8.631% | 2036 | |
| Eurobond FEB 2038Buhari serial NG-EB-2038-0327 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 7.696% | 2038 | |
| 2040s | ||||
| China Development BankTinubu serial NG-CN-2040-9851 · status: outstanding | $0.517bn | n/a | 2040 | |
| Bilateral total (China India France Japan Germany)joint serial NG-BL-2040-7707 · status: outstanding | $6.70bn | varies | 2040 | |
| Eurobond JAN 2046Tinubu serial NG-EB-2046-4750 · status: outstanding | $1.10bn | 9.129% | 2046 | |
| Eurobond NOV 2047Buhari serial NG-EB-2047-8419 · status: outstanding | $1.50bn | 7.625% | 2047 | |
| China Exim Bank loans (11+ facilities)Buhari serial NG-CN-2047-8960 · status: outstanding | $~3.6bn | 2.5% | 2047 | |
| Eurobond JAN 2049Buhari serial NG-EB-2049-6655 · status: outstanding | $0.75bn | 9.248% | 2049 | |
| 2050s | ||||
| Eurobond SEP 2051Buhari serial NG-EB-2051-3365 · status: outstanding | $1.25bn | 8.250% | 2051 | |
| FGN domestic bonds + NTBs + Sukuk + promissory notesjoint serial NG-DM-2053-7486 · status: outstanding | ₦~81.8trn | 9-20%+ (varies) | 2053 | |
| 2060s | ||||
| Ways & Means securitization tranche 1Buhari serial NG-WM-2063-2676 · status: outstanding | ₦22.7trn | 9.000% | 2063 | |
| Ways & Means securitization tranche 2Buhari serial NG-WM-2064-5533 · status: outstanding | ₦7.3trn | 9.000% | 2064 | |
| No fixed maturity | ||||
| African Development Bankjoint serial NG-ML-20XX-4414 · status: outstanding | $3.90bn | concessional/blend | open | |
| World Bank IBRD stockTinubu serial NG-WB-20XX-8019 · status: outstanding | $1.38bn | near-commercial | open | |
| World Bank IDA stockjoint serial NG-WB-20XX-9016 · status: outstanding | $18.51bn | ~0.75-1.25% concessional | open | |
The Ways & Means lines run past the edge of the page. A 40-year bond ending in 2063 does not fit a 50-year chart. The World Bank and AfDB rows have no end date; new loans keep extending them. Source: DMO instrument records, June 2026.
No. 05 · The ₦96 Note
Of every ₦100 Nigeria paid on domestic debt in 2025, ₦96 vanished as interest. We are not paying it back. We are renting it.
Source: DMO, 2025 domestic debt service: ₦8.24trn interest against ₦370.93bn principal.
No. 06 · After the last Eurobond
Twelve more years follow. Nothing matures in them. Only interest. Here they are, one year per screen, at scale.
Entering the dead zone: the years 2052 to 2063. Nothing matures until the final certificate, in 2063.
NG-WM-2063 · THE LAST CERTIFICATE
Ways & Means securitization
₦30,000,000,000,000
9.000% · 40-year FGN securities held by the Central Bank of Nigeria · issued against overdrafts printed 2015–2023
PAID — status: paid, in 2063No. 07 · Still borrowing
₦22,600,000,000
goes to interest every day.
That is a month’s minimum wage for 322,000 workers. Every day.
Approved since this page’s numbers were measured
$7.77bn
≈ ₦11.46trn in new loans, approved between March and July 2026 — after the ₦159.27trn total above was measured. None of it is in the certificate or register yet. The next DMO release will be higher.
Everything approved, in order
Nigeria has spent more than it earned every year for the past two decades.