411% revenue rise won’t stop FG borrowing –FIRS

The Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, on Tuesday said the Federal Government will continue to borrow despite its significant revenue inflows in recent months. He argued that borrowing is not a sign of weakness but part of the country’s broader economic strategy.

Adedeji also revealed that federal revenue collection surged to N3.64tn in September 2025, a 411 per cent jump from N711bn in May 2023.

“Borrowing is not a problem…is borrowing not part of the budget we submitted to the National Assembly. Was it not approved? Are we borrowing aside what was approved?” Adedeji told State House Correspondents during the latest session of the Meet-the-Press series organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Aso Villa, Abuja.

His comments come barely two months after President Bola Tinubu in July requested a $21.5bn external loan, including a $2bn foreign currency bond and a N757.98bn bond to settle pension liabilities under the Contributory Pension Scheme.

Three weeks earlier, on September 2, Tinubu declared that Nigeria had met its revenue target for 2025 ahead of schedule and would no longer rely on borrowing to fund its budget. However, the administration has been heavily criticised for excessive borrowing.

In his reaction, Adedeji described the move as an integral component of Nigeria’s financial ecosystem and overall economic plan, stressing that the government’s approach is designed to balance revenue performance with long-term development objectives.

He explained, “What is the component of a country’s budget? You have your expenditure, revenue, and loan in all budgets. So, if my expenditure for this year is N100,000 and my plan is that N80,000 will be from my revenue, I will borrow N20,000. If I’ve done revenue of N90,000 and I’m borrowing N10,000 according to what I have in my budget, what is the problem with that?

“Borrowing is not a problem. Don’t forget that banks are part of our economic ecosystem. There is no country or individual in the world that survives based on its own income. Don’t forget that when the government borrows from banks, it will pay interest. It’s from that interest that they pay their salary. It is from the salary that the banks pay taxes to the state government; it is from this profit, the difference between deposit and lending, that gives them the profit that I collect taxes from.

Adedeji explained that government borrowing is not used to pay salaries but rather to secure long-term investments. He asked critics to imagine how much more expensive it would have been if the current fiscal structure had not been built at the time it was. He stressed that borrowing allows governments to avoid higher future costs.

The revenue chief further described borrowing as part of what he termed the “Matchy Concept” in business, which emphasises continuity. According to him, projects with benefits that outlive the present generation should not be shouldered entirely at once. For example, borrowing to build a road ensures that future users can contribute through taxes, thereby paying their fair share over time.

According to him, borrowing is a critical element of any sound economic plan, and no company or country can grow sustainably without it, since it is integral to a viable nation’s ecosystem.

Addressing critics, whom he referred to as “container economists,” Adedeji suggested that many fail to ask the right questions or truly understand the issues. He noted that some rely only on surface-level narratives, drawing their arguments from social media chatter, without grasping the economic logic behind borrowing.