Nigeria spends nearly five times more of its national revenue on servicing external debts than on healthcare and education combined, according to a new report by ActionAid International and ActionAid Nigeria.
In the report released on Tuesday, the international organisation accused the International Monetary Fund of pushing policies that have undermined social spending and worsened economic hardship.
The report, titled “Still Cooking with a Failed Recipe: A Review of IMF Country Advice on Social Spending, Public Services, Debt, Tax and Gender Equality”, examined 29 IMF documents across 11 countries, including Nigeria, between February 2022 and February 2025.The countries studied included Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal and Nigeria. Others are Senegal, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe
According to the report, Nigeria spends 20.1 per cent of its national revenue on external debt payments, compared to 4.06 per cent on health and 4.40 per cent on education.
It stated, “In 2025, seven of the eight African countries studied spent more on servicing their debts than on health – and six more than double. Only Ghana and Zimbabwe managed to spend more on education than they do on debt servicing.
The scale of the debt burden relative to social spending is stark.”
The report added that “for most lower-income countries, debt is now the single biggest obstacle to increasing their social spending and public services.” ActionAid said the IMF failed to connect debt servicing with its implications for health and education funding.
“The IMF did not connect debt to social spending. Across all eight African countries studied, no IMF document compared external debt payments against health or education spending or evaluated the policy trade-offs, despite debt servicing exceeding health spending in seven of the eight African countries,” it said.
The report further stated that debt repayment was treated as “an unalterable reality”, with countries expected to allocate resources to social services only after paying creditors.
On fuel subsidy removal, the report said the IMF itself acknowledged that the government’s measures to cushion the impact on poor Nigerians were inadequate