Nigeria’s private companies saw their external debt surge 179.6 percent over seven years, climbing from $19.49 billion in 2018 to $54.48 billion by the end of 2025, according to the World Bank’s International Debt Report 2026.
This means private-sector foreign obligations nearly tripled in that period and now form a larger share of the country’s overall external debt. Private nonguaranteed debt loans taken by companies from foreign banks and investors without any government guarantee reached $54.476 billion in December 2025.
By comparison, public and publicly guaranteed external debt grew more slowly, rising 155.5 percent from $24.422 billion in 2018 to $62.4 billion in 2025. As a result, private debt increased from the equivalent of about 79.8 percent of government-backed external debt in 2018 to 87.3 percent in 2025.
Nigeria’s total external debt, which includes public, private nonguaranteed and short-term obligations, expanded from $46.238 billion in 2018 to $145.015 billion in 2025.The report also underscored the higher cost of private borrowing. New loans from private foreign creditors in 2025 carried an average interest rate of 9.6 percent and a repayment period of 12 years, versus 1.9 percent interest and 25-year terms for loans from official creditors such as governments and multilateral institutions.
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