BY CHINYERE OBIORA – The Minister of State for Budget and Economic Planning, Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite, says Nigeria must aggressively overhaul its public finances, lock down macroeconomic stability, and supercharge productivity if it hopes to seize an elite investment-grade credit rating and effectively implement its National Development Plan (NDP).
With a stern warning that there are no shortcuts, she laid bare the reality of global finance, declaring that sovereign credit ratings are the ultimate litmus test for investor confidence, directly reflecting a nation’s institutional strength, policy environment, and its raw capacity to lock in long-term capital.
Dr Uzoka-Anite, who spoke during a high-profile webinar hosted by DataPro Limited, with the theme: “Achieving Investment-Grade Rating By 2030: The Roadmap for Nigeria,”, said to bridge the gap to top-tier creditworthiness, Nigeria needs a radical roadmap anchored by four non-negotiable pillars
She listed them as: Fiscal Resuscitation: Weaponizing domestic revenue mobilization to restore fiscal health; Debt Defiance: Implementing aggressive sustainability and liability management; Economic Diversification: Fueling investment to ignite stagnant productivity; and Institutional Iron: Cementing policy credibility and strengthening national institutions.
Represented by the Statistician-General and Chief Executive Officer of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Prince Adeyemi Adeniran the Minister said a sustainable fiscal position is fundamental to creditworthiness, saying stronger sovereign creditworthiness means, “Nigeria must broaden its revenue base, improve tax compliance, digitalise revenue administration and reduce its dependence on volatile oil revenues.”
According to her, under the soon-to-be finalised NDP 2026–2030, government revenue is projected to rise from 11.15 per cent of GDP in 2025 to 18.70 per cent by 2030, and successfully achieving these projections ultimately depends on a razor’s edge, tethered entirely to aggressive structural reforms and a modern, ironclad revenue collection system.
Maintaining that, “revenue mobilisation must be matched by expenditure efficiency while public resources should increasingly support infrastructure, human capital, healthcare, education and economic diversification”, Dr Uzoka-Anita said the government is fundamentally reshaping its fiscal landscape, projecting that capital investments will swallow 57.43 percent of total expenditures by 2030, up significantly from 36.03 percent in 2025.
She admitted that moving this massive volume of capital from blueprint to reality will permanently alter national infrastructure, but its success rests on a razor-thin margin with the state ready to enforce flawless project preparation, competitive and open bidding, vigilant monitoring, accountability and absolute transparency in performance outcomes.
The Minister, who fiercely defended strategic borrowing as a vital catalyst for national development, provided every borrowed Naira is funneled directly into productive investments, acknowledged that Nigeria’s fiscal stability remains at risk due to weak revenues, crushing debt-servicing costs, and an IMF-estimated 2025 fiscal deficit of 4.4 percent of GDP, saying this reality underscores an urgent need for immediate fiscal adjustments and aggressive domestic revenue mobilization. However, the government forecasts a dramatic financial turnaround under the ambitious National Development Plan (NDP) 2026–2030.
Under this new blueprint, the Minister explained that public debt is projected to drop from 36.07 percent of GDP in 2025 to 18.83 percent by 2030 and most notably, the federal government’s debt-service-to-revenue ratio is slated to plummet from a crippling 62.93 percent to 21.01 percent over the next four years.
Uzoka-Anita said the Plan projections, depend on economic growth, prudent borrowing and effective fiscal management even as she expressed the need for Nigeria to continue strengthening debt management, managing refinancing risks and deepening domestic capital markets instruments such as Sukuk, and green bonds.
She said carefully structured Public–Private Partnerships (PPP) are supporting development financing, provided that fiscal risks and value for money are properly assessed, insisting that the guiding principle must be that borrowing should expand productive capacity rather than perpetuate fiscal pressures.
“A strong sovereign credit profile cannot be built on a narrow economic base. “Nigeria is diversifying its economy, exports, employment and sources of foreign exchange while agriculture, manufacturing, refining, solid minerals, digital services, energy and logistics offer significant opportunities”, the Minister said.
Furthermore, she stated that “the NDP 2026-2030, real GDP growth is projected to increase from 4.68 per cent in 2026 to 10.34 per cent in 2030, averaging 7.79 per cent over the plan period, the gross capital formation is projected to rise to 40 per cent of GDP by 2030, with the private sector expected to account for approximately 72 per cent of cumulative investment.”
On the ambitious targets requiring improvements in infrastructure, energy supply, access to finance, regulatory efficiency and policy predictability, the Minister admitted that the government cannot finance Nigeria’s development requirements alone, emphasizing that its role is to create an enabling environment for private investment, strengthen domestic value chains and support productivity-enhancing sectors.
With Nigeria’s economic survival resting squarely on a productive real sector, she said winning over global investors requires a foundation they can trust, stressing that modern industrial competitiveness is only half the battle; while the real catalyst for growth is building absolute confidence in the nation’s policy stability, transparent institutions, fair procurement processes, and ironclad economic data.
Also hammering that transparency, accountability, policy consistency and effective implementation are essential to building that confidence, she said, “Nigeria is strengthening public financial management, procurement, project monitoring and evaluation, and the quality of public institutions.
“Reliable economic data are equally important and the rebasing of GDP and the Consumer Price Index provides an opportunity to improve the measurement of economic activity and inflation, while sustained investment in statistical capacity and data quality remains essential.”
Welcoming Webinar participants, founder and Managing Director of DataPro Limited, Abimbola Adeseyoju described Sovereign credit ratings as the main gateway to international capital markets, dictating investment flows, borrowing costs, and the speed of national infrastructure and industrial growth.
He stated that to reach and maintain investment-grade status, African nations must build investor confidence through strong fiscal discipline, institutional reforms, deeper local capital markets, and better data transparency, adding that the process also requires shaping a distinctly African narrative, pushing for context-aware rating methodologies that balance risk evaluation with the true growth potential of emerging economies.
Adeseyoju said at the heart of DataPro’s mission is a relentless drive to dismantle the barriers between capital seekers and investors by providing transparent, credible, and highly actionable market intelligence.
Further painting a hopeful yet strategic picture for the continent, the DataPro Chief Executive expressed confidence that Africa can realistically achieve investment-grade status, a milestone he argues is entirely possible through disciplined policy execution, modernized market infrastructure, and deep cross-border unity.
