AFDB: Nigeria debt burden huge, Country needs help

President of African Development Bank (AFDB) Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has said that Nigeria needs help from the international community in tackling its debt burden.
Adesina who spoke at the Nigeria International Economic Partnership Forum in New York last Thursday, added that financing is critical to solving Nigeria’s development challenges.
According to him, “Financing is critical because the debt to GDP ratio of Africa has increased to 70 percent — several countries are the risk of high debt distress due to unstable, unsustainable debt levels.
“Nigeria’s total debt level is N42.84 trillion or $103 billion. External debt levels stand at N16.61 trillion or $40 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, Nigeria needs help to tackle this debt burden.”
He also noted that international partnerships on debt are helping Africa, and Nigeria, pointing out that the issuance of special drawing rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund of $650 billion helped provide liquidity support for countries. 
Adesina however, stated that Africa only received $33 billion out of all of that which is pretty small.
“A call made by the African heads of State for developed economies to rechannel $100 billion of additional SDRs to Africa will go a long way to reduce the debt burden in Nigeria.
“Allocating this SDR, some of this, through the African Development Bank will actually allow us to leverage it four times because we are a leveraging machine. We can deliver more financing to Nigeria and Africa,” the AFDB president declared.
Nigeria and other African countries, in my view, therefore need debt relief. They cannot run up the hill carrying a backpack full of sand and expect to climb the hill smoothly.
He said African countries, including Nigeria, need international partnership to tackle climate change.
Adesina said to understand this, all you have to do is take a look at Lake Chad in Nigeria, stating that the continent loses $15 billion as a result of climate change.