President Bola Tinubu has requested the National Assembly to approve an additional $347 million external loan under the Federal Government’s 2025–2026 borrowing plan.
President Tinubu’s request was contained in a letter to the House of Representatives, and read by Tajudeen Abbas, the Speaker, during plenary on Wednesday.
According to the letter, the president said the additional borrowing was necessitated by a rise in the funding requirement for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, whose cost has increased by $47 million, from $700 million to $747 million.
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The president explained that the upward revision was due to financing gaps in the original loan arrangement, noting that when the borrowing plan was initially submitted to the National Assembly, the lead financier had only secured commitments of up to $700 million.
The shortfall, he said, was covered through export credit agencies, but an additional $47 million is now needed to meet the total loan value stipulated in the financing documents.
The president also explained that a separate $300 million is required to fund the Nigerian Universal Communications Access Project, which aims to narrow the digital divide through the deployment of 7,000 telecommunications towers in underserved and unserved communities across the country.
He noted that the project had been inadvertently excluded from the original borrowing computation.
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President Tinubu said the projects contained in the revised borrowing plan were selected based on rigorous economic and financial evaluations and are expected to contribute significantly to national development objectives such as job creation, skills development, entrepreneurship, and poverty reduction.
He added that including the revised projects in the borrowing plan would facilitate financial closure and ensure their timely implementation.
The Speaker subsequently referred the request to its Joint Committee on Finance, Aids, Loans and Debt Management for further legislative action.
