There is a financial delusion that afflicts the chronic debtor. Picture a man with credit cards maxed to his limits suffocating under the weight of compound interest, yet strutting into a new bank for a consolidation loan. He waves the fresh credit line as a proof of his financial virility, conveniently ignoring that he has merely swapped a noose for a chain. This is not fiscal responsibility; it is the architecture of a future catastrophe. And it is the precise metaphor for the Nigerian government’s current economic policy, a macabre dance where ballooning foreign reserves are celebrated, while the very foundation of those reserves is built on a mountain of suffocating, high-interest debt. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been touting a strengthened external reserves position. To the uninformed; this sounds like a victory, but apply the most fundamental law of double-entry bookkeeping: assets equal liabilities, plus equity. If your assets (reserves) are growing primarily because your liabilities (loans) are skyrocketing, your equity, the true wealth of the country is being destroyed. The government is not creating wealth; it is performing a dangerous act of alchemy, attempting to turn Eurobonds into “reserves” and presenting the resulting illusion as an achievement worthy of applause. There is nothing to celebrate here. This is a Ponzi scheme dressed in patriotic green and white. The result of this fiscal profligacy is written in the anguished faces of the citizenry. The statistics are no longer mere data points, they are an indictment. According to recent reports, including a stark assessment by the World Bank, over 87 per cent of Nigerians are now classified as within or below the multidimensional poverty range. The government has successfully manufactured a republic of destitution. How did we arrive here? Through a master-class in mismanagement, the national budget has been reduced to a criminal enterprise. We have witnessed the grotesque spectacle of “budget padding,” where billions of naira are inserted for phantom projects, from non-existent airports to invisible flyovers, while the World Bank warns that government’s current policy trajectory is unsustainable, particularly regarding the spiraling cost of fuel subsidies (now disguised) and unproductive debt servicing. The Tinubu administration’s flagship policies, the removal of petrol subsidy and the floating of the naira were the textbook of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions sold as bitter pills for a long-term cure. Yet, even the most elementary principle of economics, the Laffer Curve, reminds us that there is a point where taxation and price shocks become prohibitive and counterproductive. By removing subsidies without first establishing a functional social safety net or domestic refining capacity, the government did not cure a disease, it exacerbated the symptoms. It triggered cost-push inflation so violent that it has eviscerated the purchasing power of the average worker. The law of demand states that when real income falls, consumption collapses. Nigeria is now a graveyard of small businesses because the government shattered aggregate demand, while simultaneously raising the cost of production through erratic electricity tariffs and currency devaluation. The hypocrisy is personified by the very custodians of public trust. This is a government where a minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation was suspended over an alleged diversion of public funds meant for the poorest of the poor—a Dantean level of irony. It is an administration where the ghost of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs scandal, involving billions meant for social investment programmes, still haunts the corridors of power. We have a Central Bank governor who juggles the role of economic policy with partisan political maneuvering, and a history of unaccounted oil revenues running into billions of dollars. These are not administrative errors; they are the systematic looting of intergenerational wealth covered by a thin veneer of technocratic jargon. Economists from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes agreed on one thing: capital is cowardly. It flees uncertainty. The Nigerian government’s reckless borrowing, not for capital expenditure but to finance a bloated governance structure, violates the “golden rule” of public finance—that governments should borrow only to invest, not to consume. When recurrent expenditure (including the astronomical cost of maintaining the Presidency and National Assembly) accounts for over 70 per cent of the budget, you are not governing, you are liquidating the state. The World Bank’s caution is not a suggestion; it is a distress flare. They have explicitly warned that Nigeria’s debt service-to-revenue ratio—crossing 100 per cent at some points, is a threat to macroeconomic stability. You cannot intimidate economic laws with executive orders. The principle of Ricardian Equivalence suggests that
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