Once again, numbers have stirred nerves — this time, the Tinubu government is rejecting a World Bank report that says 130 million Nigerians live in poverty, calling it misleading and politically tinted.
As of March 31, 2025, Nigeria owes the World Bank a total of $18.23 billion.
That is not just a line in the budget, that is our throat in a stranglehold.
But somewhere in the same corridors where the cheque was signed, we sneer at the lender’s “interference.” We reject their terms. We bellow about sovereignty. Meanwhile, 129 to 130 million Nigerians live in poverty, scraping by, competing for one meal, for a job, for dignity.
We borrow like paupers, then swagger like sovereigns.
The brutal paradox: when the lender asks to peek behind our spending, we scorn it as neo-colonial interference. When the poor demand accountability, we brand them agitators. We hate conditionality except the kind that lets us paper over theft. We rail at oversight except the kind that lets us hide failures.
Now the government of Tinubu had another weapon in their arsenal: an omnibus tax reform act, beginning January 1, 2026. According to this act, four bills passed in June 2025 will consolidate our various tax codes into one code, reform the administration of taxes, and expand the authorities of the newly established Nigeria Revenue Service (replacing FIRS) to enforce, regulate, audit.
They assert that the tax reforms are “pro-poor,” exempting income of less than ₦800,000 a year from taxation, simplifying compliance, abolishing duplicative taxes, unifying the tax landscape. They have postponed the controversial 5% fuel surcharge until 2026 to avoid sparking popular outrage. But the question is: will this be another window-dressing, another tactic to squeeze more from the struggling or an attempt to restore trust, responsibility, and revenue from within?
Because here’s the truth: we have to start policing ourselves. If we won’t permit the World Bank to peer in, then let us demand our own auditors, our own citizen review, our own transparency. If we reject foreign conditionality, we must accept domestic condition: lend only if you can show the plan, the budget, the beneficiaries, the outcomes.
We cannot exercise sovereignty as a shield under which corruption thrives. We cannot reject oversight as insult, but beg credit as necessity. If we borrow, let us borrow honestly. If we tax, let us tax a throving population. If we govern, let us render accounts.
In the end, sovereignty is not a slogan, it is stewardship. A nation cannot claim independence while living on borrowed lifelines. It cannot wave the flag in one hand and stretch the other for alms without accountability. If we choose to borrow, then let us also choose to be transparent. If we choose to tax, let it be to build, not to bleed. The burden of $18.23 billion is not just numbers on a ledger; it is a weight on the backs of 130 million Nigerians who did not sign the cheques but will pay the price.
Sovereignty without responsibility is a myth. Accountability is the price of survival.
