President Bola Tinubu has written to the Senate seeking approval for a supplementary external borrowing plan covering the 2026 to 2027 fiscal period, totalling $20,517,755,901 and 1,045,083,643 euros. The letter, addressed to Senate President Godswill Akpabio, was read during plenary on Tuesday. Tinubu said the borrowing is needed to bridge Nigeria’s infrastructure financing gap, sustain economic growth, generate employment and improve living conditions.
The plan cuts across all sectors, with emphasis on infrastructure, power, transportation, agriculture, healthcare, education, water supply, national security, employment generation and financial management reforms. The president said the projects and programmes in the plan were selected based on thorough technical and economic evaluation and their anticipated contribution to socio-economic development, and that most would be implemented across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, driving job creation, skills acquisition, entrepreneurship, poverty reduction and food security.
Akpabio referred the request to the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, chaired by Senator Haruna Manu, to work with the Committees on Appropriations and Finance, with the joint committee expected to report back within one week. He noted that elements of the borrowing plan had earlier featured in the 2025 to 2027 medium term borrowing plan and the budget, and said the request did not constitute entirely fresh borrowing.
The scrutiny question is the stock it adds to. Nigerian reporting around the request put the total debt portfolio above 166.79 trillion naira, about $120.93 billion, as at June 30, 2026. The letter, as reported, does not name lenders, interest rates, repayment terms or a sectoral breakdown, and those details are what the committee round is for. Approval is the expected outcome given the government’s Senate majority; the terms, when published, are the document that decides whether this is concessional programme money or market borrowing at Nigeria’s current yields.