Feature/OPED
Nigeria Must Continue to Borrow, Unless…..
By Mon-Charles Egbo
Every economic index is a pointer that Nigeria is on the brink, ignobly sliding into the class of nations where self-sufficiency has become a mirage. Yet and despite the hues and cries over the steady rise in her public debt profile, there is no sign that the borrowing tendencies of the federal government will abate anytime soon.
Even the grim prospects of this gloomy future already lurking on the horizon sequel to the humongous debt so far accumulated or the prevailing debt-revenue ratio cannot make the ultimate difference in attitude.
Yes, the borrowing frequency cannot be wished away because there is a missing link implying that Nigeria will continue to witness motion without movement.
Granted, borrowing is a normal practice especially in a developing economy, but it becomes the worst of strategies when borrowing for consumption rather than production. It is even more devastating when the borrowings are principally for servicing of the existing debts coupled with the sheer absence of pragmatic measures or capacities for sustainability, not to talk of a possible halt to future borrowing.
Sadly, this is the pathetic lot of Nigeria where the emerging challenges far outweigh the possibilities for socio-economic revitalization let alone expansion, thus making a worsened economic crisis inevitable.
And ironically, popular opinions place blames for this rapidly unfolding precarious situation on the legislature. To them, the national assembly has since abdicated its responsibilities of checks and balances for which the executive always has its ways when it comes to borrowing requests because the necessary questions are not being asked.
Prominently, this is the parameter for the comparison between the present and immediate past parliaments. And of course, it is catching fire among the populace largely due to the orchestrated elitist manipulation of the vulnerable as also being facilitated by the fallouts of the economic hardship in the land.
But quite objectively and given Nigeria’s peculiarities, past leadership failures indeed created the opportunities for the socio-economic woes which incidentally the present leadership inherited, while the masses, with the elites accounting for the larger chunk, are culpable in the propagation.
Ignorantly or deliberately, the predominant assumption is that citizens’ civic responsibilities begin and end with the leadership recruitment processes or that it is just about the casting of votes, forgetting that elections as well bring in both good and bad governance.
Most Nigerians seem not to know that the people’s obligations entail actively-but-objectively engaging the leadership, cooperating with the government, saying and doing the right thing all the time as well as speaking truth to power, timely and appropriately. No leadership ever succeeds without the support of the followers.
And then for both the government and the citizens, it calls for diligent commitment to an exemplary sense of accountability on both ends. Other statutory demands include willingness to collaborate and make necessary sacrifices, demonstration of strategic thinking and proactive dispositions including a commitment to asking the right questions and offering the right answers, all timely.
Standing to be counted is certainly not just about partisanship, regionalism and religion. Genuine quest for national development is more about imbibing the Kennedyian principle of seeking what to do for one’s country and not just what the country does for them. Succinctly, nation-building is about patriotism and nationalism.
For instance and retrospectively, Ibrahim Babangida’s regime in a rare democratic norm in a dictatorship threw open the debate on the desirability or otherwise of taking an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $2.5 billion to rejig the economy.
According to Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, who verifiably was not in government then, “opinion was sharply divided between those who felt we should take the loan and those who thought otherwise.
For me, there was a middle course I felt we should thread. I believed that Nigeria required the equivalent of the kind of which the IMF bailout package promised to shore up the sliding economy. At the same time, I thought that the conditions attached would, at least in the short term, make life terrible for Nigerians. These conditions included the devaluation of and floating of the naira, privatisation of social services, and rationalisation of the civil service, among others.
So, my attitude was one of a complete rejection of the IMF loan. I felt since we needed the money, we must find out how we could get it without being subjected to the harrowing terms proposed by the IMF. We should source it internally.
Satisfied with this logic, I decided to add my voice to the cacophony of voices that were already choking the public space. I suggested that instead of accepting the IMF loan and suffer the consequences of its onerous terms and conditions, wealthy Nigerians should lend the money to the government, and we had a lot of them in the country, with unimaginable but idle funds stashed up in foreign bank accounts.
Being one of the wealthy Nigerians myself, I decided to walk the talk by offering to give the country an $800,000 loan. And I challenged other wealthy Nigerians to follow suit so that together we could rescue the country from the economic crisis and save future Nigerians from economic slavery”.
What else could better describe love for the country? That Kalu then was not in government underscores that patriotism and nationalism do not come with government positions and equally are not limited to giving, but involve seeking ways to make government deliver for the benefit of the society. And again, this is the missing link in today’s Nigeria.
Moving forward, records show that the government of the day is doing a lot in combating the pitiable infrastructure deficit bedevilling the country. But the reality is that these investments are not yet translating to improved quality of life for the citizenry. Hence, the sustained outcry against the government’s proposal to borrow is unquestionably justified, though being improperly channelled.
Understandably also, it is this urgent need to make life meaningful for the masses that shapes the overall actions of the 9th national assembly, particularly the senate.
Christened the Senate That Works For The People, it is favourably disposed to things that add value to the people. It consciously does its job without unnecessarily hurting the people by grounding the economy all in a bid to be seen as being ‘truly independent’.
However, it has severally demonstrated that this overriding necessity for collaboration with the other arms of government in serving the people should not breed compromise. Diligent research offers sufficient proof in this regard.
And as for the president of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, every arm must be seen to be delivering in their mandates provided that they are being guided by the national interest and welfare of the citizenry.
According to him on why he did not toe the path of his predecessor in declining approvals to executive’s loan requests, “the situations are not the same. In 2016 there were no details. I think the president has learnt his lesson. This time, the presidency brought the requests with every possible detail. If we don’t have money and you have projects to build, how will you provide the infrastructure that you need?
“But one thing is that we are going to be critical that every cent that is borrowed is tied to a project. These are projects that will have spill-over effects on the economy and we will undertake our oversight so well to ensure that such funds are properly, prudently, economically and transparently applied on those projects.
“I want to inform this gathering and, indeed, Nigerians that the letter conveying the loan request of the executive came with every possible detail and, in fact, we will ensure that we are getting the right information from the executive arm of government…. you will agree with me that some projects are time-bound, so such projects suffer. Where revenues could not be enough, definitely not every aspect of the budget will be implemented. But it is our desire that every aspect of the budget will be implemented”.
Except for other reasons beyond good governance, this position is explicit. President Muhammadu Buhari won his elections based on what he promised to do and what he was doing. So, all he needs are complementary and collaborative efforts within the ambits of the laws.
So, instead of unfairly portraying the legislature in a bad light relative to our economic challenges, we should seek to always argue from the position of adequate and balanced information. We should acknowledge that world over, responsible and responsive parliaments are those that enjoy the people’s support and cooperation through sustainable exchange of information and ideas.
In other words, performing legislatures have a functional mechanism for robust citizens’ engagement and participation in legislative processes and governance generally; wherein the people actively monitor parliamentary activities, share information by asking the right questions and demanding the right answers as well as speaking up, timely and appropriately. For the umpteenth time, no government ever succeeds without the people.
As such, it is expected that each time any loan proposal is made public, the masses should cordially rally around their representatives, through the appropriate channels to express their opinions to effectively shape legislative outputs. Particularly, in this case, such interfaces provide veritable platforms for interrogation of the appropriateness or otherwise of the objectives for which the loans are being taken, including the terms and possible alternatives.
Among others, the people being the target-beneficiary see where the infrastructural developments occur and equally acknowledge the necessities of such relative to the economy as well as the scope, quality and cost of the projects. Hence, they are well-placed to expose corruption, plug revenue leakages and provide their representatives with relevant details that lead to robust debates at the plenary.
Above all, it is only in deliberate citizens’ participation that we can fairly assess and evaluate the legislature, aware that unapologetically, any representative that does not embody the ideals and aspirations of their people is adjudged a failure.
Therefore, rather than unwittingly harming our national image and reputation, especially based on partisan and self-serving considerations, may we show sufficient understanding that constructive criticisms capable of facilitating good governance go way beyond obsessions with talking about individuals, political parties and government institutions.
We must admit that unless the public functionaries, both elected and appointed, begin to uphold and promote the culture of excellence, while the elites revive and sustain the culture of giving back to the society, and then the people become self-motivated to close ranks with the government towards entrenching transparency at all levels of governance, the probity and accountability that drive good governance would remain elusive and borrowing must continue. We should appreciate where we are coming from and then concede that open hostilities do not in any way advance the social contract between the people and the government.
And finally, are there no more Nigerians in the mould of Senator Orji Uzor Kalu who are persuaded out of patriotism and nationalism “to follow suit so that together we could rescue the country from the economic crisis and save future Nigerians from economic slavery”?
Mon-Charles Egbo is the print media aide to the president of the senate.
By Louis Strydom
Last year, I argued in my piece Lean Carbon, Just Power that a limited and temporary increase in African carbon emissions is justified to meet the continent’s urgent electrification needs.
That position was not a retreat from climate ambition. It laid out a credible lean-carbon pathway that reconciles power systems development realities with climate arithmetic.
The central question remains: not whether emissions must fall, but how much temporary headroom is tolerable to accelerate energy prosperity for a continent responsible for roughly 4% of global CO2.
The flexibility equation
The future of Africa’s electrification is neither “all renewables tomorrow” nor “gas indefinitely”. Intermittent renewables alone cannot power the continent’s fragile grids at scale. Solar and wind require highly dispatchable power capacity to ensure the reliability of the system.
The real choice is not between renewables and fossil fuels in the abstract; it is between flexible firm power that complements solar and wind, and the de facto alternative: the increasing reliance on high-emissions diesel backup and widespread grid instability.
I argue that a realistic transition strategy must embrace “a capped carbon overdraft”: a strictly bounded, time-limited deployment of flexible power plants running on gas that supports the deployment of renewables and declines according to a binding schedule. This strategy means accepting minimal, temporary emissions to allow for a faster, cleaner and more resilient clean transition.
The response to this argument drew serious scrutiny. Three objections deserve a direct answer.
First: Does the case for flexible thermal power hold on a full life cycle basis?
It does. Our power system studies in Nigeria, Mozambique, and Southern Africa consistently reach the same conclusion – the least-cost long-term system is renewables-led, with flexible engines balancing variability. That holds across capital, fuel, maintenance, carbon pricing, and decommissioning. South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan 2025, approved in October, makes the point concretely: it projects 105 GW of new capacity by 2039 with renewables as backbone, yet includes 6 GW of gas-to-power by 2030 explicitly for grid stability. Even the continent’s most industrialised economy concludes it needs dispatchable thermal capacity to underpin a renewables-heavy system. The question is not whether firm power is needed, but how to make it as clean and flexible as possible.
Second: Does this argument talk over Africa’s ambition to leapfrog fossil fuels?
No. It is designed around that ambition. Wärtsilä launched the world’s first large-scale 100% hydrogen-ready engine power plant concept in 2024, certified by TÜV SÜD, with orders opening in 2025. Ammonia engine tests now demonstrate up to 90% greenhouse gas reductions versus diesel. These are not roadmaps. They are ready-to-use technologies. The honest difficulty is timing. Sub-Saharan grids averaged 56 hours of monthly outages in 2024. The African diesel generator market is growing at nearly 7% a year, projected to reach 1.3 billion dollars by 2030. Nigerian businesses spend up to 40% of operational costs on fuel for backup power. That is the real counterfactual – not a continent neatly powered by sun and wind, but a billion-dollar diesel habit deepening every year the grid stays unreliable. Even Germany is tendering 10 GW of hydrogen-ready gas plants with mandated conversion by 2035 to 2040. If Europe’s largest economy needs transitional thermal flexibility to backstop an 80% renewables target, insisting low-income African nations skip that step is not climate leadership. It is development deferred.
Third: Does the carbon comparison include full life cycle methane?
It must. Methane leakage materially worsens the climate profile of gas-to-power because methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂. If leakage exceeds a few per cent of production, gas loses its advantage over coal on a 20-year timeframe.
But the IEA notes that 40% of fossil methane emissions could be eliminated at no net cost with existing technology. My claim that gas has a lower footprint than coal is conditional on aggressive methane management – eliminating flaring and venting, enforcing measurement under frameworks like the EU Methane Regulation and OGMP 2.0. Without those conditions, the arithmetic fails. But the real choice in most African markets is not between pristine gas and pristine renewables. It is between ageing coal, a growing fleet of unregulated diesel generators, and new fuel-flexible plants that start or transition to gas and convert to hydrogen or ammonia on a contractual schedule. Displacing diesel and coal with well-managed gas in future-fuel-ready engines cuts CO₂, local pollution, and water use now, while building the infrastructure for fuels that eliminate fossil dependence.
The critics are right to demand rigour, full life cycle accounting, methane transparency, and credible timelines. Those are exactly the conditions that make a lean-carbon pathway work. Africa does not seek permission to pollute. It seeks the tools to end energy poverty while peaking emissions early and declining fast. Build engine power plants that run on available fuel today. Mandate their conversion tomorrow. The carbon overdraft stays small. The payback stays fast. And the technology to switch to sustainable fuels is already here.
Louis Strydom is the Director of Growth and Development for Africa and Europe at Wärtsilä Energy
You’re back home after mudik (homecoming), the suitcases are unpacked, and the excitement of being with family for Eid already feels like a long time ago. But just because Eid is over doesn’t mean the special connection of being with family has to fade. Here are the best group chat features for beating the post-Raya blues.
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Keep The Vibe Going by Sharing Ramadan Highlights
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Keep the Memories Rolling with Status: Your Status feed doesn’t have to go quiet just because you’re back home. Post the most memorable throwback photos from the Eid reunion and add questions to spark responses like “What was your favourite Raya dish?” Add music and stickers to Status to keep the energy alive.
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Express Yourself with Text Stickers: Turn inside jokes, family slogans, or a favourite Eid quote into a Text Sticker. It’s a quick, personalised way to add some warmth and humour to the group chat.
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Skip the Stock Cards, Use Meta AI for a Personal Touch: Don’t just send a generic “Hi” or “Good morning” in the family chat. Use Meta AI to make your personalised greeting card or quickly transform a single photo into an animated image to send a heartfelt, animated check-in.
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Schedule The Next Reunion
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Plan Your Next Post-Raya Get-Together: The blues often hit when the fun ends. Keep spirits up by creating a new Event in the group chat right away. Add event reminders so everyone doesn’t miss the opportunity to connect.
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Schedule a Call, Don’t Just Say “Call Me”: Carry on the family tradition of staying connected, even when you’re miles apart. Tap + then Schedule a call in the Calls tab to lock in a regular “Post-Raya Check-in” video call. Send a reminder so everyone can join on time.
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Keep the Raya Spirit Alive by Getting Everyone Involved
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Assign yourself a fun “tag” in the family group: Are you the one who always ends up cooking? Or the one who plans the itinerary for family trips? Or the master of GIFs who keeps everyone amused? Use the Member Tag feature in the group to give yourself a witty, funny, or practical role—”Next Event Planner” or “Tech Support Guru,” maybe?. Member tags can be customised for each group you’re in.
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Share a Spontaneous ‘I Miss You’ Video: Did you just see something that reminded you of the reunion? Press and hold the camera icon to record a spontaneous Video Notes message. It’s faster than typing and instantly brings warmth and real-time emotion back into the group.
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Digital Hugs: Making the Long-Distance Moment Count
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Share a Moving Memory: Don’t just send a still photo. Share a Live or Motion Photo to capture the ambient sound and movement of a recent Eid moment. It makes your memories feel more vivid, personal, and real—a perfect antidote to feeling disconnected.
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Your Group Chat Background: Create a vibe with Meta AI: Don’t settle for a plain background for your family group chat. Use Meta AI to generate unique, custom chat wallpapers that reflect something uniquely memorable to your family: be it food, travel or a sport that unites everyone. Every time you open the chat, you’ll feel the warmth, not the distance.
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Make Sure No One Misses Out
No More FOMO: Send the Conversation History: Just added a family member who couldn’t make it to mudik? When adding a new member, you can now send up to 100 recent messages with the Group Message History feature. No need to recap; let them catch up instantly and feel included from the first tap.
By Olumide Balogun
Nigerians are natural explorers. Whether finding the best supplier in Balogun market, hunting down a recipe for party jollof, or looking for the most affordable flight out of Lagos, we are always searching.
Today, human curiosity is expanding, and the way Nigerians express it is evolving. We are speaking to our phones, snapping photos of things we like, and asking incredibly complex questions. For the Nigerian business owner, understanding this shift is a massive opportunity to get discovered by eager customers.
Here are four ways AI is rewriting how Nigerians search, along with simple steps to ensure your business is exactly what they find.
1. Visual Discovery is the New Normal
People are increasingly using their cameras to discover the world around them. Picture someone spotting a brilliant pair of sneakers in traffic and wanting to know exactly where to buy them. Today, shoppers simply take out their phones and search visually.
Tools like Google Lens now process over 25 billion visual searches every single month, and many of these searches are from people looking to make a purchase.
How to adapt: Your product’s visual appeal is paramount. Make sure you upload clear, high-quality images of your products to your website and social media. When a customer snaps a picture of a bag that looks like the one you sell, having great photos ensures your business pops up in their visual search results.
2. Conversations Replace Simple Keywords
Shoppers are asking highly nuanced, conversational questions. They are typing queries like, “Where can I find affordable leather shoes in Ikeja that are open on Sundays and do home delivery?”
To handle these detailed questions, new features like AI Overviews act like a superfast librarian that has read everything on the web. It provides users with a perfectly organised summary and links to dig deeper.
How to adapt: Answer your customers’ questions before they even ask. Create detailed, helpful content on your website and fully update your Google Business Profile. List your opening hours, delivery areas, and unique services clearly. This ensures the technology easily finds your details and recommends your business when a customer asks a highly specific question.
3. Intent Matters More Than Exact Words
Predicting every single word a customer might use to find your product is a huge task for any business owner. Thankfully, modern search technology focuses on the underlying need behind a search.
If someone searches for “how to bring small dogs on flights,” AI understands that the person likely needs to buy an airline-approved pet carrier. The technology looks at the true intent of the shopper.
How to adapt: You no longer need to obsess over guessing exact keywords. By using AI-powered campaigns, you allow the technology to understand your products and match them to the customer’s true needs. Your business will show up for highly relevant searches, bringing you customers who are actively looking for solutions you provide.
4. Smart Assistants Handle the Heavy Lifting
Running a business in Nigeria requires incredible hustle. Managing digital marketing on top of daily operations takes significant time and energy. The next frontier in digital advertising introduces agentic capabilities, which hold a simple promise of delivering better results for your business with much less effort.
The technology now acts as your personalised assistant.
How to adapt: You can simplify your marketing by using the Power Pack of AI-driven campaigns, including Performance Max. You simply provide your business goals, your budget, and your creative assets like photos and videos. The AI automatically finds new, high-value customers across Google Search, YouTube, and the web. It adapts your ads in real time to match exactly what the shopper is looking for, allowing you to focus on running your business.
The language of curiosity is constantly expanding. Nigerians are discovering brands in entirely new ways using cameras, voice notes, and highly specific questions. By understanding these behaviours and embracing helpful AI tools, you can let the technology connect eager customers directly to your digital doorstep.
Olumide Balogun is a Director at Google West Africa
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