Beyond the cost of borrowing, Oyedele cautioned governments against responding to fiscal pressures by imposing additional taxes on vulnerable households and productive sectors of their economies.
He argued that governments needed to improve domestic revenue mobilisation and identify inefficient expenditure while ensuring that fiscal measures did not deepen hardship or weaken economic activity.
According to him, taxation and borrowing both have economic and social consequences and should be assessed according to their implications for household welfare, investment and long-term development.
He noted that higher taxes could deprive low-income households of resources needed for food, healthcare and education, while excessive taxation of businesses could undermine productive activity and employment.
“The way I like to put it is: if you collect taxes, you raise the money now, and that itself has a lot of trade-offs. What taxes are you collecting? Are you collecting taxes from the most vulnerable, and this will deprive them of money to provide food, health, education? They have to be mindful of tax, and debts is future taxes,” he said.
He added that the choice was not simply between taxation and borrowing, but about striking a balance that supported sustainable public finances without undermining citizens’ welfare.
“So it’s not one or the other. It’s to strike a balance, bearing in mind ultimately that the essence of tax and of debts is to cater for the people. If you put people always at the centre of your policies, you will not be perfect, but you are likely to strike a balance that works and is sustainable,” he said.
His remarks highlighted the dilemma facing developing economies as governments seek to raise revenue, contain debt and meet rising demands for public services.
Oyedele also stressed that economic growth needed to create employment and improve living standards rather than be judged solely by headline macroeconomic indicators.
He warned that the adoption of artificial intelligence could complicate employment prospects if governments failed to make deliberate policy choices on its deployment and regulation.
“It’s not only just the World Bank and the IMF. This is a collective responsibility for all of us to ensure that growth is not just for the sake of growth. It has to be job-rich. It has to be inclusive, and at the end of the day, must be able to translate to better living standards for our people,” he said.
Masha, however, maintained that macroeconomic stability remained essential to achieving these objectives, arguing that governments needed a stable economic environment to implement structural reforms, employment policies and infrastructure programmes.
Oyedele agreed, describing stability as the foundation for sustainable growth and prosperity.
“The stability itself is the foundation upon which you can build the growth and the prosperity that you want for your people,” he said.
Oyedele: Africa Needs Policy Alignment to Unlock AfCFTA
On regional economic integration, Oyedele called for stronger policy coordination among African countries, arguing that the AfCFTA could transform the continent’s economic prospects if governments removed trade barriers and established consistent rules and standards.
Speaking at the Africa’s Golden Future panel during the Annual Meetings, he said the agreement offered an opportunity to turn Africa’s fragmented national markets into a larger, more competitive continental market capable of supporting production, investment and trade.
“So we have a lot of small countries, and what AfCFTA is trying to do is to turn 54 countries into one market, so that way it’s easy for us to scale. But that will not happen until we remove the barriers, and many of them are actually non-tariff,” he said.
He explained that effective implementation would require clear standards, predictable regulations and supporting infrastructure, noting that non-tariff barriers remained a major impediment to intra-African commerce.
Oyedele cited Nigeria’s National Single Window initiative as an effort to streamline border processes and improve trade facilitation, adding that technology was being deployed to make the process more efficient.
He also disclosed that Nigeria was developing an economic policy framework incorporating its international commitments, including regional treaties.
According to him, economic integration would remain difficult if countries failed to align their trade, fiscal and monetary policies, even within their own borders.
“If you have trade policies, fiscal policies, monetary policies, and they’re not speaking together even within the same country, you can imagine the nightmare dealing with 54 or 53 other countries,” he said.
The minister also emphasised that policy consistency, institutional strength and public trust were critical to attracting private capital, which Africa needs to close its development financing gap.
“Capital follows trust before it follows returns. They need to be able to plan and predict what you are going to do,” he said.
Reflecting on Nigeria’s economic reforms, Oyedele said governments needed to communicate the reasons for policy changes clearly, demonstrate the consequences of failing to implement them and ensure that reforms were properly sequenced.
He explained that price corrections should be followed by efforts to stabilise the economy before policies to expand growth were pursued.
Institutionalising reforms through legislation and strong institutions, he added, would help ensure that they survived changes in political leadership.
“But most importantly, think about how do you make it sustainable, and that’s by putting it into institutions and putting it into law. So, most of the reforms we did in Nigeria are either enacted into law or embedded into institutions, because you need to be able to do that for sustainability,” he said.
He also cautioned that reform implementation needed to account for the circumstances of vulnerable citizens, particularly in African countries where poverty and limited access to education remained widespread.
Oyedele said governments had to ensure that people could withstand the immediate effects of economic adjustment while waiting for the benefits of reform to materialise.
He cited cash transfers to more than 10 million households in Nigeria and education funding supporting more than 1.5 million students as examples of social protection measures intended to cushion the impact of reforms, according to his remarks.
The minister maintained that Nigeria’s experience demonstrated the possibility of implementing difficult economic reforms, provided governments remained committed to policy consistency, institutional development and measures to protect vulnerable populations.
His position reinforced the broader message from the meetings: economic stability, affordable development financing and regional integration must work together to generate investment, create jobs and deliver tangible improvements in citizens’ living standards.