I think that one of the major reason why you're making this assumption that it's foolish to take up loans is because you don't know what this loans are used for and possibly don't understand that most African countries and even some European countries that appears to be doing well better than us economically owes more debt than Nigerian in terms of the loans they owe IMF and other international monitory agencies

On the IMF list of countries that owes them, Ghana is still owing at least 2.3 billion,  Costa rica and Cote devoir are owing at least 2 billion. Even Egypt and Ukraine are owing 20 billion and 10 billion respectively while Nigeria is owning just 920 million.

Even though from the world bank angle they might be toping on the list even though they aren't even on the top 10 (if my findings isnt wrong), we've got to know that in terms of population and economy point of view they aren't doing bad with the extent at which the collect loans.

The main issue is, "what do they make use of these loans for? If the loans was used for better economic purposes like making sure that our refinaries are functional or that we're creating more systems that increases our economic strength, that would have been the best but what's mostly the case is that we take up loans from international financial organizations and end up embazling them without creating any positive system from it.

The US and other top countries that are doing well economically are still indebted but the difference is with the effective utilization of the debt.