By Abel Olorunda
Imagine working for thirty days, only to earn a salary that disappears the moment it lands, swallowed by debts you took just to survive. This isn’t fiction. It’s the bleak reality for thousands of Nigerian civil servants caught in the ruthless grip of loan interest rates that make legal slavery look like mercy.
Every month, government workers including those who teach your children, protect your streets, run your hospitals and ministries among others watch their salaries vanish into the vaults of smiling bankers and silent regulators.
While inflation devours income, and the cost of living climbs without shame, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) keeps pushing interest rates sky-high, with zero empathy for the average Nigerian. Commercial banks, in turn, see civil servants not as people, but as walking ATMs ripe for exploitation.
The Loan Trap: A Devil in a Suit
Banks today are charging civil servants between 35% to 40% interest on salary-backed loans, IPLAS and GPLAS.
That’s not credit. That’s a chain around your neck with a smiling face attached to it.
But wait, there’s more:
2% management and processing fee (for what, exactly? Opening a file?)
1% insurance per annum, whether you need it or not.
Over a 3-year loan period, that’s an additional 5% upfront charge!
• Now let’s break this down in painful numbers.
A civil servant takes a loan of ₦1,000,000 over 3 years at a 40% interest rate:
Monthly deduction: ₦48,110.15
Total repayment in 3 years: ₦1,731,965.40
Add charges (5%): ₦50,000
Total repaid: ₦1,781,965.40
Actual benefit to the worker: Just ₦218,034 after 3 years
• NLC: Sleeping Giant or Silent Partner?
How can they watch their members descend into poverty and remain silent? Where are the campaigns? Where is the pressure? Where is the fight?
The NLC cannot continue to be a ceremonial figurehead. This is a national emergency. Workers are being financially lynched, and the NLC must choose: protect the people or perish with its irrelevance.
• Bankers as Butchers of Hope
What’s worse is how some bank staff, the so-called financial experts convince workers to take these loans with the twisted justification that “prices will rise anyway.”
That is not financial advice; that is economic terrorism. You don’t encourage someone to walk into a burning building just because it might rain tomorrow. Instead of offering solutions, they are selling hopelessness. And profiting from it.
Enough is Enough
This madness must stop. We are not asking for favors. We are demanding justice for civil servants who serve this country with sweat and sacrifice.
• The Demands:
Single-digit interest rates (no more than 9%) for all salary-backed loans.
Scrap or regulate all hidden fees—processing,management, and insurance.
Immediate restructuring of existing high-interest loans.
Public accountability from the CBN and commercial banks—we need transparency, not tyranny.
NLC must launch a national campaign against loan exploitation or step aside for real leadership.
You cannot build a nation on the broken backs of your workers. You cannot preach patriotism while bleeding your workforce dry. And you cannot sit comfortably in offices while the people who power the system drown in debt. This is a call to conscience, a cry for justice, and a fight for financial freedom. Because if we don’t speak now, we might all be too broke to talk tomorrow.
