The National Economic Councilon Monday approved the refinancing of the country’s $3.3 billion Project Gazelle crude-backed loan through a larger $4.5 billion facility.
The Federal Government expects the deal to cut borrowing costs, release fresh dollars into external reserves and hand the federation back a slice of oil it had signed away three years ago.
The new facility — christened “Project Gazelle 2” — allows NNPC Limited to clear the roughly $1.5 billion outstanding on the 2023 loan while drawing an additional $3 billion in liquidity to shore up reserves and bankroll the government’s fiscal and infrastructure commitments.
The approval came at the Council’s 159th meeting, held virtually and chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima, following a presentation by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Taiwo Oyedele. Details were released in a statement by Stanley Nkwocha, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications in the Office of the Vice President.
The Headline Number Isn’t the $3bn — It’s the Barrels
The most consequential detail for the federation’s monthly revenue is buried in the fine print. Under Gazelle 2, the crude pledged as security drops from 90,000 barrels per day to about 78,750 bpd — a 12.5 per cent cut.
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That releases 11,250 bpd back to the federation, barrels that can now be sold at market and the proceeds shared through the Federation Account rather than being swallowed by debt service. At roughly current benchmark prices, that is a non-trivial monthly addition to distributable revenue — which explains why state governors on the Council backed it without visible resistance.
“The refinancing has been structured on more favourable terms than the original facility,” Oyedele told reporters after the meeting, adding that the arrangement “is freeing up resources for strategic national priorities while strengthening the country’s financing structures.”
Council, the statement said, “observed the significance of unlocking additional liquidity to the federation” and pledged support for implementation.
What Gazelle 1 Actually Was — and Why the Terms Matter
The context the announcement leaves out is what Nigeria agreed to in the first place.
Project Gazelle was arranged by Afreximbank and announced in January 2024, structured as a syndicated crude oil prepayment facility sponsored by NNPC Ltd — then Nigeria’s largest-ever such deal and one of the biggest syndicated loans raised in Africa that year. An initial $2.25 billion was disbursed, with a second tranche of $1.05 billion to follow, and a later $925 million accordion disbursement.
Critically, the original was a five-year facility priced at 6.0 per cent above three-month SOFR — expensive money by any standard, reflecting both the market conditions of late 2023 and Nigeria’s risk premium at the time. It carried a price-balance mechanism under which 90 per cent of excess cash from committed cargoes was released after debt service, with 10 per cent used to prepay and shorten the tail. Initial lenders were Afreximbank, Gunvor International BV and Sahara Energy Resources, with UBA as local arranger. Afreximbank
It was raised for one blunt reason: the Tinubu administration needed dollars fast to steady a naira in free-fall after the unification of the exchange-rate windows. Gazelle bought FX liquidity by mortgaging future cargoes.
That the same barrels can now be refinanced with less crude pledged and better pricing is, in effect, a market verdict — a repricing of Nigerian oil-sector risk after three years of reform aimed at pulling international oil companies back in and lifting production. NNPC is negotiating from a stronger position than Mele Kyari’s team held in December 2023.
The Caveat Nobody at the Briefing Volunteered
Gazelle 2 is still $4.5 billion of oil-collateralised debt, and the facility is now larger than the one it replaces. Nigeria has retired $1.5 billion of obligation and immediately taken on $3 billion more — cheaper, longer, less crude-intensive, but debt all the same, serviced from cargoes that have not yet been produced.
Neither the tenor nor the new margin over SOFR was disclosed at the briefing. Until those numbers are published, the government’s central claim — that this “optimises cost” — cannot be independently verified. For a facility of this size, that disclosure gap matters.
Shettima’s Other Message: Poverty Policy That Can Be Seen, Not Just Heard
Opening the session, the Vice President pressed Council for a responsive, scalable and data-driven social protection policy to confront multidimensional poverty — a pointed juxtaposition against a multi-billion-dollar oil-backed financing on the same agenda.
Government policies, he argued, “are often heard before they are seen.” They speak, he said, “through the price of food, the condition of hospitals, the records in schools, the strain on families, the confidence of those who invest their labour in the nation’s future, and, very importantly, the ambitions of state governments.”
He asked members to ensure every decision reassures citizens “that their government is paying attention to the pulse of the nation and is resolved to respond with competence, compassion and purpose.”
The framing carries an implicit challenge to the governors who sit on Council: the “data-driven” qualifier points at the perennial weakness of Nigeria’s social register — the difficulty of identifying, verifying and reaching the poor at state level, which has repeatedly undermined federal cash-transfer and palliative programmes.
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