A damning new report by ActionAid International reveals that Nigeria devotes 20.1 per cent of national revenue to external debt servicing — nearly five times the combined spending on health and education — while accusing the IMF of deliberately ignoring these devastating trade-offs in its policy advice.
Nigeria is paying its creditors. Its citizens? That’s another story.
A new report by ActionAid International and ActionAid Nigeria, released Tuesday, as reported by The Punch, lays bare a staggering imbalance at the heart of Nigeria’s public finances: the country spends 20.1 per cent of national revenue on external debt payments, against just 4.06 per cent on health and 4.40 per cent on education.
That’s nearly five times more for creditors than for classrooms and clinics — combined.
The report, titled “Still Cooking with a Failed Recipe,” examined 29 IMF documents across 11 countries between February 2022 and February 2025, and its findings on Africa are particularly brutal.
“In 2025, seven of the eight African countries studied spent more on servicing their debts than on health — and six more than double,” it stated.
The IMF takes direct fire. ActionAid accuses the global lender of treating debt repayment as “an unalterable reality,” with social spending permitted only after creditors are satisfied — and of never once formally comparing debt servicing costs against health or education allocations across any of the eight African countries studied.
On Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal specifically, the report noted that even the IMF acknowledged government cushioning measures for poor Nigerians were inadequate.
“For most lower-income countries, debt is now the single biggest obstacle to increasing their social spending and public services,” ActionAid concluded.
The recipe, it seems, keeps failing the same people.
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