February 17, 2015/Bloomberg

Nigeria’s domestic debt will rise this year as Africa’s biggest economy borrows more to meet a shortfall in revenue caused by the plunge in the price of oil, its main export, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

“‘Our income is still coming from a source that is not diversified,’’ Okonjo-Iweala told a conference Tuesday in the capital, Abuja. ‘‘Because of the drop in oil prices we will have a difficult year.’’

The additional domestic debt will go toward paying the salaries of government employees, she said. ‘‘You cannot throw people out on the streets.’’

‘‘A year ago before the fall in prices we said that we should save but we were not listened to,” Okonjo-Iweala said, referring to lawmakers who had opposed her moves to use a lower oil price for budgeting and save the rest. “Today they’re saying we didn’t save.”

Nigeria, which is facing rescheduled presidential elections on March 28, trimmed spending by 8 percent and reduced the proposed benchmark oil price twice, before settling for $65 a barrel in December.

Planned capital spending of 634 billion naira ($3.2 billion) this year is 15 percent of the total budget of 4.36 trillion naira, with recurrent spending, including salaries and overheads, representing about 80 percent.

The amount to be borrowed will “now depend on the final scenario” adopted after talks with lawmakers this week, Okonjo-Iweala said. “Then we’ll know exactly how much more debt that we’ll raise.”