Nigeria’s total external debt has risen from $10.32bn on June 30, 2015, to $40.06bn as at June 30, 2022, The PUNCH has learnt. This shows that there has been an increase of 288.18 per cent in seven years, according to the external debt stock reports by the Debt Management Office. A breakdown shows that in 2015, 36 states had $3.27bn external debt while the Federal Government had $7.05bn. By 2022, states’ external debt rose to $4.56bn, while the Federal Government’s external debt increased to $35.5bn. The debts included loans from multilateral sources such as the World Bank, the African Development bank and the International Monetary Fund. They also included bilateral loans from China, France, Japan, Germany and India, as well as commercial sources including Eurobonds and Diaspora bonds. Nigeria’s external debt ballooned as the naira lost value, increasing Nigeria’s debt service burden and worsening its ability to service debt. The International Monetary Fund recently said that the long-term rate of the depreciation of the naira equated to a loss of 10.6 per cent of its value annually since 1973.