By Abubakar Yunusa
Nigeria’s debt to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) dropped slightly to $18.5 billion as of March 31, 2026.
The figure represents a $2 million or 1.7 percent decrease compared to the $18.7 billion recorded in December 2025, the lender’s latest financial report showed.
Despite the marginal decline, Nigeria remained the third-largest country exposure on the IDA borrowers list.
The West African country fell behind Bangladesh with $22.7 billion and Pakistan with $19.2 billion.
Nigeria was followed by Ethiopia at $14.4 billion, Tanzania at $14.3 billion, Kenya at $13.2 billion, and India at $12.4 billion.
In addition, Vietnam recorded $10.8 billion, while Ghana and Ukraine posted exposures of $7.4 billion and $6.7 billion, respectively.
The exposure figures form part of the IDA’s management discussion and analysis report for the quarter ended March 31, 2026.
The IDA is the concessional lending arm of the World Bank that provides low-interest loans and grants to low-income countries.
The report said the top 10 borrowing countries accounted for a significant share of the institution’s total exposure, highlighting the concentration of IDA financing among a small group of countries.
“As of March 31, 2026, IDA had $230.8 billion of loans outstanding, of which loans in nonaccrual status represent 0.4%,” the report reads.
“IDA’s accumulated provision for losses on loans and other exposures was $6.3 billion, which represents a provisioning rate of 2.0% of the underlying exposures as of March 31, 2026 ($6.2 billion as of June 30, 2025, 2.0% of the underlying exposure).”
On April 15, the Debt Management Office (DMO) said Nigeria’s total public debt for federal and state governments rose to N159. 27 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025 — an increase of N5.98 trillion compared to N153.29 trillion recorded at the end of the third quarter (Q3).
A few weeks earlier, President Bola Tinubu asked the national assembly to approve external loans totalling $6 billion.
