The National Credit Guarantee Company (NCGC), on Tuesday said that it has helped unlock ₦64.13 billion in bank lending in its first 14 months.
The company said ₦30.19 billion in guarantees had supported loans to 174,495 borrowers through 19 participating banks, microfinance institutions and development lenders as of October 21.
Chief Executive Officer of the company Bonaventure Okhaimo told reporters at the Presidential Villa, Abuja that it works out to roughly ₦2.12 in credit for every ₦1 of guarantee deployed.
He said the programme doesn’t lend directly but NCGC instead, guarantees part of eligible loans – up to 60% under its standard framework, so lenders can extend credit to borrowers they might otherwise reject for lacking conventional security.
Okhaimo said the goal was to counter lending practices that can require collateral worth more than 150% of a loan, shutting out otherwise viable businesses. “Our value proposition is simple,” he said.
“We provide partial guarantees that de-risk lending, expand the supply of credit and catalyse economic growth.”
The company said 22,616 borrowers obtained formal bank credit for the first time under the program, while women made up 42.7% of beneficiaries.
Trade, commerce, agribusiness and agro-processing accounted for more than 80% of those reached.
NCGC said the lending had supported an estimated 914,791 direct and indirect jobs.
The total combines 175,481 direct jobs reported by participating lenders with 739,310 indirect jobs calculated using development-finance multipliers, including those used by the African Development Bank.
Such multiplier-based estimates are common in development finance but are harder to verify than loan volumes, since they depend on assumptions about how credit ripples through suppliers, employees and local economies.
NewsQuest reports that the announcement comes as President Bola Tinubu’s administration seeks visible evidence that its economic overhaul is broadening opportunity, not just stabilizing macroeconomic indicators.
Okhaimo said NCGC would expand guarantees and financial-literacy programs as part of the government’s stated ambition to build a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
Women Affairs Minister Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim said the hardest phase of the reforms had passed, citing stronger external reserves, easing inflation and returning confidence.
She acknowledged the policies had imposed costs on households but said the sacrifices would ultimately pay off.
For now, the programme’s early numbers suggest that relatively modest public guarantees can pull private lenders into segments they have long avoided.
