When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office on May 29, 2023, the first public-debt figure published after his assumption of office was ₦87.38 trillion as of June 30, 2023. By December 31, 2023, total public debt had risen to ₦97.34 trillion, then to ₦144.67 trillion by December 31, 2024, and further to ₦159.28 trillion by December 31, 2025, according to the Debt Management Office’s latest published data. Part of the early jump reflected the formal securitisation of ₦22.7 trillion in Ways and Means advances from the Central Bank, which had existed before Tinubu but was incorporated into the stock in 2023. Even so, the scale of the increase under the new administration is striking. In nominal naira terms, Nigeria added more than ₦71 trillion to public debt between June 2023 and December 2025. That does not mean all of it was fresh cash for new projects; a good share came from exchange-rate effects, legacy obligations being recognised, and deficit financing. But it does mean the Tinubu years have quickly become one of the sharpest periods of debt accumulation in Nigeria’s recent fiscal history.