A policy group, the Independent Media and Policy (IMPI) has disclosed that Nigeria spent $388 billion defending the naira in the previous 23 years of civil rule before the President Bola Tinubu administration assumed office and harmonised the multiple foreign exchange rates.
The think tank noted that its research showed that inspite of the massive expenditure by previous governments, the naira continued to slide against the dollars during the period.
In a policy statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Omoniyi Akinsiju,argued that the administration’s decision to harmonise multiple foreign markets saved the country a minimum annual spend of $16.8 billion on defending the naira.
it said: “Nigeria’s foreign exchange ecosystem is now celebrated worldwide for its predictability and stability, directly due to the policy of harmonising foreign exchange windows. Before the Tinubu administration made that decision, Nigeria had made the defence of the local currency, the Naira, a state policy. Yet the Naira continued to depreciate against the dollar, no matter how much was spent defending it.
”According to records, the Federal government spent $388bn to defend the Naira between 2000 and 2023. This is an average of $16.8bn yearly. The Obasanjo administration spent about $60bn to defend the Naira over eight years, while its successor, the Yar’Adua administration, spent $58bn over three years, and the Johnathan administration broke all known records, spending $145bn over five years. This contrasted with the Buhari administration spending $125bn to defend the Naira in eight years.
”This wasted $388bn, as it were, should have been accounted for in the nation’s external reserves and deployed directly to build the economy rather than being filtered away. Despite the dollar’s deployment to defend the Naira, the exchange rate remained volatile throughout this period. The Naira still crashed from N22 in May 1999 to N460 in May 2023 at the official window, a 2100% loss, while it crashed from N80 to N780 at the black market within the same period.
”Currently, our comparative analysis of Naira defence spending between 2000 and 2023 and between 2023 and now shows that the Tinubu administration deployed a stronger foreign exchange management model. The CBN intervention in the FX market totaled just about $7.8 bn between 2024 and 2025. Impressively, the naira gained 7.14% in 12 months with the intervention in 2025, reversing a chronic, uninterrupted decline since 2012.
”Again to the credit of the Tinubu administration, the unification of the foreign exchange market and the enforcement of the “Nigeria First” local content policy made foreign goods more expensive while boosting domestic manufacturing with more local inputs, thereby making Nigerian-produced goods cheaper. This has shifted Nigeria from an import-dependent economy to an export-surplus economy. This recalibration resulted in a trade surplus of over ₦ 6.69 trn by late 2025.”
IMPI added that its investigation revealed that the country’s poor fiscal situation before 2023 had some links to populist government policies that were used to fritter away the country’s resources.
”Our investigation of the fiscal events leading to the bewildering economic chaos of 2023, showed that the crisis was rooted in the retrogressive, populist-based economic model adopted and implemented by the three federal administrations from 1999 to 2015. The fiscal awkwardness that characterised Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s administration (May 2010- May 2015), especially, was a poignant indication of the desecration of a potentially prosperous economy that was truncated by a combination of poor insights, lack of fiscal managerial skills, and outright exploitation and filtering away of the fiscal resources of the state.
”To put this in perspective, we tracked the revenues which accrued to the federal government and the use to which the respective administration applied them between 1999 and 2015.
”During former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure from May 1999 to May 2007, Nigeria realised roughly $401.4bn in total crude oil revenues, and the government saved a significant portion of earnings above the budget benchmark, totaling over $9bn in the Excess Crude Account (ECA).
”Following the same trend, the tenure of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, May 2007 to May 2010, recorded a gross oil and gas revenue of between $120bn and $130bn, while oil and gas revenue during the Jonathan administration, 2010 to 2015, rocketed to more than $454bn.
”Despite the high revenue that accrued to the federal government, totaling $994.4bn, the three administrations left a combined external and domestic debt of about $65.49bn and a foreign reserve of $29.61bn, with a liquid component of about $28.74bn. In comparison, $875m of it was inaccessible to the succeeding Buhari administration.
”We consider it rather disappointing that the huge federally generated revenue and the sovereign negative balance sheet bequeathed to the successor federal administration in 2015 were aggregated with the squandering of $1.059trn in earned revenue by the three successive federal governments between 1999 and 2015,” the statement said.
