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Daniel Adaji
Nigeria has paid a total of $266.14m in interest and service charges to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) between 2020 and 2025, based on official figures tracking its financial transactions under the IMF’s General Resources Account (GRA).
The document obtained by Pointblanknews on Sunday showed that these payments stem from a $2.45bn emergency loan secured in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at stabilizing the economy during a period of severe global disruption.
Interest and service charge payments began at $13.37m in 2020 and rose steadily in the following years as the loan matured and repayments began.
In 2021, Nigeria paid $26.07m in charges, increasing to $43.15m in 2022. The peak came in 2023 with $108.37m in charges, before easing to $69.23m in 2024 and finally dropping to $5.95m in 2025. In total, the country paid $266,141,993 in interest and charges across six years.
Alongside servicing the interest, Nigeria has also made significant progress in repaying the principal amount of the loan. Between 2023 and 2025, the country repaid nearly $2.15bn of the original $2.45bn borrowed. The largest single repayment occurred in 2024, when Nigeria paid back $1.23bn, followed by $613.63m in 2023 and $306.81m in 2025.
The data confirmed that Nigeria did not utilize other IMF financing mechanisms such as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) or the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) during this period. This suggests a deliberate choice to engage only with the standard emergency lending facility and to pursue a swift exit strategy from IMF debt.
While the repayment milestone is commendable, Nigeria must continue pursuing structural reforms and diversification to safeguard against future economic shocks.