Key questions this article answers:
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With the FG’s ways and means financing currently securitised, how bad is Nigeria’s debt situation?
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What is responsible for the significant rise in FG spending over the last eight years?
Guardrails are the unsung heroes of modern transportation, the unassuming barriers that line our roads to prevent us from accidents. In other parts of our lives, we also have guardrails. They are accountability partners stop us from making wrong decisions or lawmakers that prevent a government from driving the country into a fiscal ditch.
Unfortunately, Nigeria's fiscal guardrails haven’t done an excellent job of keeping the country out of disaster.
Last week, Nigerian lawmakers finally approved securitising the federal government’s ₦22.7 trillion ways and means financing, meaning the government can convert the short-term loan facility to a 40-year bond. According to the CBN Act, ways and means is an overdraft from the CBN to the