Nigeria’s external debt stock rose 6.6% in 2025 to $145.02 billion, a World Bank measure that includes private and short-term liabilities alongside public borrowing.
The World Bank’s 2026 debt table records the 2025 total at $145.0155 billion, against $135.9878 billion for 2024. It assigns $56.8841 billion to long-term public and publicly guaranteed debt and $54.476 billion to long-term private debt without a government guarantee. Short-term debt came to $28.1392 billion, while the total also includes $5.5162 billion in International Monetary Fund (IMF) credit and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocations.
The table separates public and publicly guaranteed borrowing from private debt that carries no government guarantee. It lists short-term debt separately from both long-term categories, and identifies IMF credit and SDR allocations as another component. Those private and short-term amounts are part of the World Bank total, making it a broader measure than Nigeria’s public-debt accounts.
The Debt Management Office (DMO) reported ₦75.198 trillion in public external debt as of June 30, 2026. That figure is in naira and covers a later date than the World Bank’s 2025 snapshot, so the two amounts describe different measures rather than points in one time series. EconoTimes previously covered the June 2026 public-debt figures.
Across developing countries, external debt reached $9.4 trillion in 2025, the World Bank said. The total was 5.5% higher than a year earlier, the fastest annual increase since 2021.
For countries eligible for concessional financing from the Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), the average rate on new private-credit commitments was 8.2%, while new bonds averaged 9.4%. The Bank said the private-credit rate was the highest since 1989.
The World Bank warned that heavy debt burdens threaten to crowd out essential investment. Haishan Fu, the World Bank Group’s chief statistician and director of development data, said, “These countries are borrowing more, paying more, and in many cases leaving less for long-term development.”
