The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported on Tuesday that Nigeria’s public debt stock increased to N44.06 trillion (about $101.91 billion) in the third quarter of 2022 from N42.84 trillion ($103.31 billion) in the preceding quarter.
The Bureau gave these figures in its ‘Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt Report for Q3 2022’ hoisted on its website.
According to the agency, the public debt stock comprising both external and domestic debt grew by 2.84% month-on-month in the quarter under review.
The Bureau disclosed that external debt stood at N17.14 trillion ($39.66 billion) in the third quarter of the year while domestic debt stock totalled N26.91 trillion ($62.25 billion).
This is even as it reported that the share of external debt to total public debt stood at 38.92% in Q3 2022, while domestic debt was recorded at 61.08%
The debt stock profile showed that the Federal Government’s share of domestic debt was 80.07% in Q3 of 2022 while the stock on state-by-state basis reflected that Lagos State topped the domestic debt chart with N877.03 billion at the end of Q3 2022.
Lagos was followed by Delta with N272.61 billion and Ogun with N241.78 billion debt profiles respectively while Jigawa recorded the lowest debt at N44.40 billion, followed by Kebbi and Katsina at N60.13 billion and N62.37 billion respectively.
Analysts have over the past two years been raising serious concerns about the nation’s debt to GDP ratio while the Debt Management Office (DMO) maintained that the debt remained sustainable.
Latest data by the DMO indicated that Nigeria’s public debt stock would hit N77 trillion by May this year if the National Assembly approved the government’s N23.8 trillion Ways and Means Advances from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
