‏The recent approval by the Senate of the request by President Tinubu for the borrowing of $800m from the World Bank has been raising concerns among Nigerians. The angst is not just about the danger of further increasing the stockpile of our already unsustainable debt level but also of whether borrowing for consumption – in this case borrowing to enable the government transfer the sum of N8,000 per month over six months to 12 million poor households – is the best way of cushioning the inflationary impacts of the removal of fuel subsidy and flotation of the Naira on the poor in Nigeria. It should be recalled that President Bola Tinubu in a letter to the Senate explained that the loan would be used to scale up the national social safety net programme. He also claimed that the monthly social cash transfer would have “a multiplier effect on about 60 million households”

There are several issues that are embedded in this discourse: