Tajudeen Abbas, speaker of the house of representatives, on Monday, September 8, raised alarm over Nigeria’s rising debt profile.

As reported by Daily Trust, Abbas warned that it has crossed the country’s statutory threshold and now threatens fiscal sustainability

Speaking at the opening of the 11th Annual Conference and General Assembly of the West Africa Association of Public Accounts Committees (WAAPAC) at the national assembly, Abuja, Abbas said Nigeria’s debt had reached “a critical point” and called for urgent reforms in borrowing practices and oversight.

He said: “As at the first quarter of 2025, Nigeria’s total public debt stood at N149.39 trillion, equivalent to about US$97 billion. This represents a sharp rise from N121.7 trillion the previous year, underscoring how quickly the burden has grown. Even more concerning is the debt-to-GDP ratio, which now stands at roughly 52 percent, well above the statutory ceiling of 40 percent set by our own laws.”

He described the breach of the debt limit as “a signal of strain on fiscal sustainability,” stressing the need for “stronger oversight, transparent borrowing practices, and a collective resolve to ensure that tangible economic and social returns match every naira borrowed.”

Abbas warned that across Africa, several countries are in dangerous debt-to-GDP territories, with governments spending more on servicing loans than on healthcare and essential services.

He said: “This is not just a budgetary concern, but a structural crisis that demands urgent parliamentary attention and coordinated reform.”

To address the growing fiscal risks, Abbas announced that Nigeria is ready to champion the establishment of a West African Parliamentary Debt Oversight Framework under WAAPAC.

The framework, he explained, will harmonise debt reporting across the sub-region, set transparency standards, and empower parliaments with timely data to scrutinise borrowing practices.

He also disclosed plans for a regional capacity-building programme for public accounts and finance committees, equipping members with modern tools for debt sustainability analysis and fiscal risk assessment.

Abbas, while warning against reckless debt, said borrowing should be for the purpose of bridging critical infrastructural gaps.

He said: “Borrowing should support infrastructure, health, education, and industries that create jobs and reduce poverty. Reckless debt that fuels consumption or corruption must be exposed and rejected. Oversight is not just about figures, but about the lives and futures behind those figures.”

Furthermore, the speaker reiterated the 10th house’s commitment to accountability, saying that under its Open Parliament policy, major borrowing proposals would be subjected to public hearings, while simplified debt reports would be made available to citizens.

“The diesel I’d ordered when the price was astronomically higher was already on the high seas, heading for Nigeria. Now, it was worth a fraction of my purchase price. I said to myself, “I’m finished.”

I’d fallen into suffocating debt in mere seconds. What could I do? Still, I remained confident, certain that a solution would arise from somewhere. To make a dire situation even worse, the oil price crash also meant foreign currency flow into Nigeria nosedived. The Central Bank decided to devalue the naira. And with that, my debt load skyrocketed. The loans I took when the exchange rate was N117/US$1 would now have to be paid back at N165/US$1. That was a massive blow. N60 billion was evaporating before my eyes and I was saddled with N40 billion in interest. “

My twin son Kehinde Awoyinfa, CEO of TRIANGLE NIGERIA LTD, a hi-tech home and office design, automation company in Lekki, Lagos, knowing the bibliophilic or book obsessed father he has, had driven to my home last week to give me a surprise. He had bought me one hardcover and one paperback editions of Nigeria’s one-time, big-time diesel-selling entrepreneur Femi Otedola’s latest book, MAKING IT BIG: Lessons From a Life in Business. Unknown to him, I had bought my copy. You can then imagine the young man’s anticlimactic feeling when he came in and found me reading my copy of the Otedola memoir which in all honesty is a master class on entrepreneurship and resilience. Otedola recounts how he monitored oil prices one fateful day and watched his fortune unravel. Oil had been trading at an impressive $147 per barrel. Confident, perhaps even reassured by history, he placed a massive order of diesel worth $500 million for his company Zenon Petroleum. Then the unthinkable happened. Let’s hear this pathetic life, business, and moral lesson story from the horse’s mouth, from Otedola himself:

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I IGNORED MY INNER VOICE

A friend once asked if my instincts told me Zenon was going to be in trouble. I must confess that my inner voice failed me in that instance. It happened overnight—oil prices collapsed and ruined me. I was monitoring the market on my computer and saw oil at US$147 per barrel. I had already ordered diesel worth US$500 million. Then, just like that, it began to go down. It dropped to US$110. I thought it would possibly dip below that. I calculated the odds and felt I would still be OK, but right before my eyes, it crashed to US$37.

The diesel I’d ordered when the price was astronomically higher was already on the high seas, heading for Nigeria. Now, it was worth a fraction of my purchase price. I said to myself, “I’m finished.”

I’d fallen into suffocating debt in mere seconds. What could I do? Still, I remained confident, certain that a solution would arise from somewhere. To make a dire situation even worse, the oil price crash also meant foreign currency flow into Nigeria nosedived. The Central Bank decided to devalue the naira. And with that, my debt load skyrocketed. The loans I took when the exchange rate was N117/US$1 would now have to be paid back at N165/US$1. That was a massive blow. N60 billion was evaporating before my eyes and I was saddled with N40 billion in interest.

I resisted the impulse to sell my bank shares, which would later be one my greatest regrets. I’d have made huge profits if I had done so. I had bought into Zenith Bank at N12 per share and would have made N110 billion if I had exited when the price rose to N60. I owned 2.3 billion shares, which represented an 8% ownership stake in Zenith. I had 6% of the United Bank for Africa, and I would have cashed out with N81 billion. In total, I would have reaped N191 billion windfall. But that was not to be.

My total debt from the oil crash catastrophe was N200 billion. The stock market crashed because of the oil price crash, and those shares were worth next to nothing. Such things are always clearer in the rear-view mirror, but if only I had followed my instincts.

On the other hand, when the opportunity presented itself to pay off the debts by giving up my properties to AMCON—a lifeboat in the Nigerian economic crisis—I disregarded those who advised against doing so and jumped at the opportunity. The time comes when you have to concede that if you sink, you sink, and if you grab onto a life preserver, you’ll stay afloat. On this occasion, I was ready for it. I gave up extensive property holdings in exchange for debt relief and set out to rebuild my life.

I relinquished ownership of truck parks and land in Lagos, buildings and estates in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, filling stations all over the country, a Bombardier private jet, stock in various banks and oil companies, and fuel storage tank farms near Apapa. I gave it all up to start anew.

The experience showed me that there is no absolute certainty in life. If God wants to take anything from you, it will not take him one minute. Look at me: my financial life was upended in a span of one week. Great wealth can be wiped from the books in the blink of an eye.

I look back and conclude that I had to experience what I did to be able to move to the next phase of my life. I was now free of debt and more introspective about entrepreneurship. I suppose it had to happen at one point in life or another in my life. If it did not happen then, it would later. Let us assume that oil prices had not collapsed, I would have gone upstream. I would have continued taking on more debt, pursuing more high-flying opportunities. One day, at some point down the road, oil prices would eventually crash, because the market is cyclical, and I would have found myself in even greater debt and bigger trouble.

I suffered to learn and I am better off than I was before the Zenon crisis.

SOMETIMES, YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON BEING PRAGMATIC

While I am a believer in following my instincts, I can be flexible in that regard. I look at the bigger picture and choose rigid pragmatism at times. But being too stiff can also be a problem. Ignoring your intuition can be harmful, while relying solely on it can be counterproductive. Life experience will teach you who and what to trust, and when. By and large, I follow my instincts. I am pleased with many decisions that were based on my visceral sense of what to do, such as settling my debts with my properties. That’s the best decision of my life. Separating family from my business was another excellent decision. Handing over management to a new team of professionals was also the right way to go. I followed my instincts, and I am better for it.

By Lanre Alfred

I have often said that the most dangerous wars are not fought in the deserts of Sambisa or the swamps of the Niger Delta; they are planned over champagne glasses in Maitama lounges, perfected in the conspiratorial corners of Abuja cocktail parties and waged in polished boardrooms.

Power in Nigeria is never left unchallenged, and if you imagine that enemies disappear because you survived one storm, then you are already courting disaster.

Which is why I find myself deeply unsettled by what I hear whispered in hushed tones about Bayo Ojulari, the Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL)....click link for details

He believes, so I hear, that the storm around him has passed. He assumes that because he has not been dragged into yet another public scandal in recent weeks, the vultures have abandoned their hunt.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the vultures are circling closer, hungrier, and deadlier than before.

And I say this with the conviction of one who has lived long enough in high society’s theatre of intrigue to know that the fiercest daggers are not wielded by enemies at the gate but by friends at the table.

The storm around Ojulari is not over, it has only gone underground. The cabal that once sought his head has not retired to the shadows in defeat; they have regrouped, reorganised, and this time, their playbook is sharper.

The story making the rounds in select Abuja drawing rooms is chilling. A high-ranking member of Ojulari’s own management team, yes, a man who sits across from him in meetings, who addresses him as “sir” with practiced deference, has now become the lead conspirator. This individual, from what I am told, has positioned himself as the mole, the inside man, feeding external traducers with information, documents, and ammunition that could destabilise Ojulari’s tenure.

This is the cruel irony of power: the most dangerous enemy is always the one who knows your schedule, your weaknesses, your blind spots. I do not envy Ojulari. Imagine sitting in a boardroom, trading jokes with a man who has already drafted your obituary in the corridors of influence.

But Abuja is Abuja. Here, betrayal is not a character flaw; it is a survival tactic. And if Ojulari is not yet fully awake to this reality, then the next ambush may very well end his career.

Unlike the first round of attacks, which were noisy and visible, this fresh batch of assaults is being fine-tuned to be surgical. I have heard whispers of dossiers, files thick with allegations, some perhaps exaggerated, others entirely fabricated.

These dossiers, according to insiders, are being prepared to be leaked to the media and the power brokers who matter, those who have the ears of President Bola Tinubu.

And make no mistake, Abuja thrives on perception. In this city, a rumour repeated often enough acquires the texture of fact. A rumour in Asokoro can become a headline in Lagos within 24 hours. By the time Ojulari hears the story, it may already be too late.

Pundits are quick to say this is the cabal fighting back. And they are right. Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has never been a playground for the fainthearted. The entrenched interests who feel sidelined by Ojulari’s policies are not the type to lick their wounds quietly. They are used to getting their way; they are used to cutting deals in the dark. For them, Ojulari is an inconvenient roadblock, a man whose tenure threatens the delicate balance of influence that has lined pockets for decades.

So, of course, they want him out. And, of course, they will not stop until they achieve it. But the intrigue takes a darker twist when you consider the speculation that if Ojulari has soiled his hands even slightly; by signing off on a questionable contract, overlooking a misstep, or failing to cover his tracks, the cabal will weaponise that evidence against him. In other words, if he has given them a nail, they will build a coffin around it.

What unsettles me most is not the cabal, it is the fact that the betrayal is internal. Abuja society is full of stories like this. I recall a certain parastatal head who, believing he had defeated his enemies, threw a lavish party at the Hilton, only to discover months later that the man leading the charge to remove him was the “loyal subordinate” who toasted him at the event. History is full of such tragedies.

The lesson is simple: the enemy within is always deadlier than the enemy outside. Outside enemies may threaten, but inside enemies are deadlier.

If I were in Ojulari’s shoes, I would not sleep with both eyes shut. I would first tighten my house, conduct loyalty checks, and identify the moles. It is not paranoia, it is survival. Every empire has fallen because the emperor trusted the wrong man at the wrong time.

Second, Ojulari must embrace transparency like a shield. The moment a fresh rumour or narrative is launched, he must counter it with facts. Delay is fatal. In Abuja’s gossip economy, silence is rarely golden; it is a death sentence.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, he must reposition himself as indispensable to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s larger economic reforms. Because in this city, relevance trumps innocence. If Tinubu sees him as integral to his oil and gas vision, the cabal’s darts may bruise but they will not bury him.

Permit me, at this juncture, a detour into the cocktail circuit, because that is where much of this war is being plotted. I was recently at a dinner in Maitama where a senator leaned over his wine glass and said, “Ojulari does not know what is coming.” The table chuckled knowingly. This is how Abuja operates; wars are fought with official memos and in coded jokes at private dinners.

In Wuse II lounges, among the city’s nouveau riche, the talk is already that Ojulari is a marked man. Some believe he will not last the year; others insist Tinubu will protect him because “Baba does not like to be seen as succumbing to blackmail.” But the fact that his fate is a topic of casual conversation at high-society gatherings tells you everything; you are only safe in Abuja when nobody is talking about you.

Ojulari’s case is a reminder of how fragile power is in Nigeria. Today, you are celebrated with front-page photographs and glowing press releases. Tomorrow, you are the subject of a leaked dossier, your name smeared in WhatsApp groups, your allies deserting you one by one.

I remember the story of a certain former minister, a man once hailed as the “star boy” of his administration. One day, he was the darling of the President; the next, he was left out in the cold, betrayed by those he thought loyal. Abuja does not do permanent friends, it only does permanent interests.

And so, I return to my refrain: the storm is not over. It has only gone quiet, and quiet storms are the deadliest. Bayo Ojulari must not be lulled into a false sense of security. The enemy is not at the gate, the enemy is in his team. And unless he sharpens his instincts, fortifies his alliances, and stays two steps ahead, he may yet be unceremoniously booted out of office.

Source: Thecapitalng