President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday sacked the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun.
Edun was sacked alongside the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Umar Dangiwa.
Sources said the finance minister’s sack was not unconnected with his deteriorating health.
An informed source who pleaded anonymity told The ICIR that “Edun was released to go and attend to his deteriorating health condition. He wanted to go since late last year but was asked to stay on for the president to get a replacement.”
Edun, who just returned from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring meeting in Washington, DC, has been directed to hand over to the Minister of State, Taiwo Oyedele, who is now to take over as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy.
“This is long overdue; the finance sector was a monumental mess and failure, and appalling to the embarrassment of Mr President,” a public affairs analyst, Kunle Olubiyo, said in reaction to the sack.
Evaluation of Edun’s role as Finance Minister
Edun’s tenure was characterised by poor budget implementation and spearheading hardcore reforms of the Tinubu administration.
Under his watch, fiscal discipline was broken, and Nigeria saw three cycles of budget implementation against the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
His tenure oversaw the ignoble and unprecedentedly concurrent implementation of the 2023 budget, 2023 supplementary budget, 2024 budget and the 2025 budget.
His tenure was also characterised by poor releases of the capital component of the budget. For instance, in the 2025 budget, the health ministry got an appropriation of N218 billion, with the release of only N36 million. This poor release in the health sector affected the immunisation of many Nigerian children and related programmes because of poor payment of the counterpart funding from the government.
Since 2023, despite a significant increase in the government’s revenue base through tax reforms, the removal of subsidies, and the floating of the naira, Nigerians have yet to feel the impact of the government’s safety nets, despite claims of conditional transfer releases to about eight million Nigerians, running into billions of naira.
Despite his downside, Edun, widely known as Tinubu’s close ally, oversaw reforms that helped stabilise the naira, build reserves, deliver a trade surplus, and raise gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
The reforms also pushed reserves above $40 billion, and advanced major tax reforms.
Critics point to high inflation under his tenure. Power outages worsened under his watch, as he sat at the Board of Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading company (NBET) which de-risks power sector investment.
Poor power supply has continued to affect households and the cost of doing business, with fuel prices rising by 65 per cent despite Dangote Refinery operations in the country.
Housing Ministry gets minister designate
Also, Muttaqha Rabe Darma has been named as the ministerial nominee for the Housing and Urban Development Ministry.
The memo also directed Dangiwa to hand over to the Minister of State in the ministry.
The memo stated that “all handing over and taking over processes should be completed on or before the close of business on Thursday, 23rd April, 2026.”
Dangiwa and the failure to close housing deficits
The former minister had noted that the sector needed 55,000 units of housing annually for 10 years, which would take N5.5 trillion to accomplish.
He noted that the government budgeted far less when the sector needed a minimum of N500 billion annually to achieve the renewed housing cities target.
He also struggled with the perennial problem of land administration and the titling crisis, as most land remained unregistered for credits and mortgages.
Most Nigerians struggled to access mortgages with rising interest rates and weak income levels to fund current housing costs.
ICiR