Crusoe Osagie explains that Dangote has earned the right to a duel with unscrupulous employees of Nigerian regulatory institutions, individuals with virtually no skin in the game, yet hellbent on making decisions capable of consigning Nigeria to the abyss while dragging Dangote along with it.
Nigeria at the moment is clearly overleveraged. A recent report released by the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics stated that in the past 24 months, the Nigerian state has borrowed about N66 trillion, a figure it revealed was more than all the debt Nigeria accumulated during the previous 55 years combined.
This debt figure is clearly alarming, but even more troubling is the fact that it is difficult to identify the critical infrastructure, security improvements, or transformational economic programmes that these borrowings were undertaken to finance. Across the country, roads remain largely decrepit, electricity generation continues to fluctuate below 5,000 megawatts for over 200 million citizens, insecurity persists in several regions, and inflation has continued to erode household income and business profitability.
According to the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics, the recent borrowings have pushed the nation’s total public debt to about N159.2 trillion. When broken down, this translates to roughly N670,000 owed by every Nigerian alive today. Nigeria’s debt service-to-revenue ratio has also remained among the highest in the world, with reports from the Debt Management Office and international financial institutions showing that a significant percentage of government revenue is now used simply to service debt obligations.
