President Bola Tinubu has challenged Nigeria’s banking and financial services industry to move away from heavy reliance on financing government and redirect more capital towards businesses, production and job creation.
Tinubu, who spoke on Tuesday at the 19th Annual Banking and Finance Conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), said Nigeria’s improved fiscal conditions should progressively create space for increased private-sector lending.
Represented by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, the President said the country must accelerate the transition “from financing government to financing growth” if the gains of ongoing economic reforms are to translate into broad-based prosperity.
He said attractive returns on government securities had, for years, made lending to the productive economy comparatively less compelling for financial institutions.
“As fiscal conditions improve, government will progressively create space for more private sector credits,” Tinubu said.
He explained that the objective was to establish a cycle in which stronger fiscal discipline would reduce government financing pressure, while lower inflation would support lower interest rates and make capital more affordable for businesses.
According to him, cheaper capital would stimulate investment and production, leading to more jobs, higher incomes and increased tax revenue, which would in turn strengthen fiscal sustainability.
“That is how gains from reform begin to compound at scale, and the financial sector must be ready for that transformation,” he said.
The President also warned that the ongoing bank recapitalisation must produce more than larger balance sheets, insisting that stronger financial institutions should translate their increased capacity into capital formation in the real economy.
“A bigger bank that does not finance a more productive economy is a suboptimal outcome,” he said.
Tinubu said the banking industry should increasingly be judged not only by balance-sheet growth, profitability and shareholder returns, but also by what the financial system contributes to the real economy.
He argued that a resilient banking system could not be sustained indefinitely if businesses were unable to obtain affordable credit, manufacturing firms could not expand and productive micro, small and medium enterprises remained excluded from formal finance.
The President said his administration was therefore expanding the architecture of guarantees, risk-sharing, blended finance and credit enhancements, with the National Credit Guarantee Company at its core, to encourage private capital to flow into productive investments.
“Our measure of success should increasingly move from how much government spends to how much productive capital it catalyses,” he said.
Tinubu also outlined five imperatives for building a resilient financial system: growth facilitation, financial inclusion, technology, long-term capital and trust.
On financial inclusion, he said having a bank account should not be mistaken for genuine access to finance, stressing that true inclusion would mean enabling market women to obtain working capital at reasonable costs and allowing young entrepreneurs to borrow against viable cash flows.
He urged banks to embrace technological developments, including artificial intelligence, open banking, digital identity and instant payments, while strengthening cybersecurity, data protection and fraud prevention.
The President further stressed the need for Nigeria to deepen its capital markets, insurance, pension and asset-management industries to mobilise domestic savings and foreign capital for long-term investments in infrastructure, industry, housing and energy.
“Capital is highly mobile. It’s neither emotional nor patriotic. It goes where risk-adjusted returns are attractive and competitive,” he said, challenging Nigeria to become a more attractive destination for capital.
Tinubu said trust remained fundamental to financial resilience, noting that depositors must trust banks, banks must trust borrowers, investors must trust markets, while citizens must trust regulators to enforce rules fairly.
The President also highlighted what he described as improvements in Nigeria’s macroeconomic indicators, saying the economy grew by 4.43 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 and that the country’s foreign reserves had risen to about $54 billion, the highest level in 18 years.
He said headline inflation had eased to 15.43 per cent, while the capital market had returned about 60 per cent and the country’s second-quarter trade surplus had grown by more than 100 per cent year-on-year, with non-oil exports outpacing oil exports.
According to Tinubu, Nigeria’s sovereign yield spread had narrowed to below 200 basis points, while Moody’s had changed the country’s outlook from stable to positive.
He said the reforms had also improved conditions in the foreign exchange market, recalling the difficulties businesses and individuals faced several years ago in accessing foreign exchange and making international payments.
However, Tinubu cautioned that macroeconomic stability should not be mistaken for economic prosperity.
“Stability is the foundation, prosperity is the destination,” he said, adding that the next phase of the reform programme should convert stability into investment, investment into production and production into jobs.
The President said Nigeria possessed significant advantages, including its large market, young and entrepreneurial population, sophisticated financial sector, growing digital economy and access to a continental market of more than 1.4 billion people through the African Continental Free Trade Area.
He urged financial institutions to see Nigerian businesses not merely as borrowers, but as potential regional champions capable of growing from micro-enterprises into major conglomerates.
He also called for a shift from financing imports towards financing exports and from speculation towards productive investment.
“The next chapter of Nigeria’s development cannot simply be about bigger financial institutions or larger balance sheets. It must be about a bigger and more productive economy where capital reaches ideas, finance enables enterprise, technology expands opportunity, risks are intelligently shared, and growth translates into better lives for our people,” Tinubu said.
The President said his administration would continue pursuing reforms aimed at strengthening macroeconomic stability and investor confidence, while regulators would safeguard financial stability and enable responsible innovation.
“Resilience is not the absence of disruption. It is our capacity to turn disruption into transformation,” he said.
