A policy think tank, the Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI), says Nigeria spent $388 billion defending the naira in the previous 23 years of civil rule before the President Bola Tinubu’s administration harmonised the nation’s multiple foreign exchange windows.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Omoniyi Akinsiju, and made available on Friday, the group said the huge expenditure by previous governments, failed to stop the naira’s steady depreciation against the dollars over the period, and argued that harmonising the FX market has since saved the country an average of $16.8 billion annually.
According to IPMI’s breakdown, the Obasanjo’s administration spent about $60 billion defending the currency over eight years, while the Yar’Adua’s administration spent $58 billion in three years. The Jonathen administration, the group said, spent the most at $145 billion over five years, compared to $125 billion spent by the Buhari administration over eight years.
Despite this spending, the naira fell from N22 to the dollar in May 1999 to N460 at the official window by May 2023, a decline the group put at over 2,100%, the currency slid from N80 to N780 on the parallel market within the same period.
IMPI said its comparative analysis showed a different outcome under the current administration, noting that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) FX market interventions totalled roughly $7.8 billion between 2024 and 2025. It said the naira gained 7.14% over a 12-month period in 2025, reversing a decline that had persisted since 2012.
On the roots of the pre-2023 fiscal crisis, IMPI blamed what it described as populist economic policies pursued by the Federal administrations between 1999 and 2015, particularly under President Goodluck Jonathan, whose government it said was marked by poor fiscal management and the” filtering away” of state resources.
The group said the three administrations in that period earned a combined $994.4 billion in oil and gas revenue yet left behind combined external and domestic debt of about $65.49 billion and foreign reserves of $29.61 billion by 2015, of which only fraction was readily accessible to the incoming Buhari administration.
IMPI described the outcome as a squandering of over $1 trillion in earned revenue by successive governments between 1999 and 2015.
