Is There A Backstory To Wale Edun’s Exit?

The short answer is yes – but there’s a long answer. There is, in fact, more than one inside story about why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu removed the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun.

The online newspaper Premium Times published multiple likely versions in a single story. The biggest issue, according to the newspaper, was the poor release of capital funds.

It reported, however, that there were other reasons, from complaints of delayed payments to contractors to criticisms by lawmakers of “zero implementation” of the 2025 capital budget.

Perhaps the most dramatic, according to the newspaper, was the heated exchange between Edun and the President at a December Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, during which aides were obliged to intervene to cool things down. Edun tried to make it up afterwards, but the paper said it was too late. He had crossed the Rubicon.

Was it about health?

LEADERSHIP offered a different backstory. It downplayed conflict and policy failure and focused instead on health concerns about Edun. According to the newspaper, it’s the second time in 22 years that Edun has left a top job due to failing health.

The first time was in February 2004, when, less than a year into Tinubu’s second term as governor of Lagos, Edun resigned his appointment “on health grounds.”

In October last year, two years into his tenure as Finance Minister, he was rushed to London for medical treatment and was out of circulation for a while, only to surface at a London fair, when he couldn’t attend the IMF/World Bank meeting.  According to the newspaper, Edun, who turned 70 on April 20, a day before he was fired, was removed because he could obviously no longer cope with the pressure to perform.

The Chagoury angle

The online newspaper, TheCable, gave a very dramatic account that, among other things, linked Edun’s removal to sleepwalking over payments to Hitech Construction (Nig) Limited, a company linked to Tinubu’s influential friend, Gilbert Chagoury, handling the Lagos-Calabar Highway construction.

Reuters offered a slightly different version, downplaying personal and political drama and highlighting, instead, economic outcomes and investor pressure for performance.

How the IMF was “implicated”

Outside the media ecosystem, there were quite a few interesting guesses after the announcement of Edun’s removal. One source said, almost authoritatively, that Edun’s comment at the IMF Spring meeting in Washington was the last straw. I was almost tempted to dismiss it as nonsense, but thought it would be rude, so I asked, “How?”

Then, this source, who probably knows just about as much of the goings on in government as I do about Point Nemo, explained that Edun’s statement that Nigeria had no plan to approach the IMF for a loan, “was without clearance from the President.”

With nearly N19 trillion in debt under Tinubu and over $20 billion in borrowing in the pipeline, unless the government is determined to sink the country in a sea of debt, I wasn’t quite sure how Edun’s statement could have led to his removal.

But the source swore it was exactly the reason, adding that if I hear any version other than his, it may well be from the usual suspect, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), planting misinformation.

The inside story, I’m told, however, was that the IMF/World Bank had, during the Spring Meeting, accused the Tinubu government of a lack of transparency in managing public finance. Edun’s reply that Nigeria didn’t need any more IMF loans was at variance with the charge of opacity, setting off alarm bells at the Villa.

Three years, not bad

If you discount the role of superstition in politics, over the last 20 years, the average tenure of Nigeria’s Finance ministers has been between two and three years.

The longest has been Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who served for seven years, and Zainab Ahmed, who served for five. Still, the core cluster has been far shorter, suggesting that Edun’s two and a half years are above average – long enough to start reforms, but often not long enough to consolidate them fully.

His removal is attracting extra attention because 1) the government insists that the economy has stabilised and is on the path of recovery, 2) Edun combines his role in Finance with coordinating the economy, and 3) he is one of the ministers with a reputation of being a part of the President’s kitchen cabinet.

If the economy is not broken, why remove the finance minister, and how could one of the President’s most trusted men be removed in a press statement that describes his removal as a “minor cabinet reshuffle,” bundling him out with another minister, Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, whose name many had barely heard until his sacking was announced?

It’s broken, not shattered

The Presidency is walking back the sack story. In a statement on Wednesday that sounded like the Edun affair was a broken story, but not a shattered one, the Presidency said Edun and Dangiwa resigned; they were not fired. Except if official communication, even at such vital moments, operates on the principle of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, the tardy handling of Edun’s exit is quite extraordinary.

The Oyedele moment

From the moment Taiwo Oyedele was nominated as junior minister of Finance on March 3, many, quite rightly, suggested that Edun’s days were numbered. But the suspicion then was that he might be interested in running for the governorship of Ogun State and needed to meet the President’s March-end deadline for resignation; a suggestion he later denied.

I’ve heard that Edun always wanted to be governor of the Central Bank, but was refused the position by the President. It’s quite ironic that the CBN governor has now outlasted him in office. So, which backstory is believable? There’s not a single backstory, but among the several enlightened and unenlightened guesses, two are the most probable.

Cabinet frustrations

The first is the broad frustration across the cabinet over capital releases and delayed payments to contractors. Although the Tinubu government had shifted from quarterly capital releases to a performance-based system, in which a significant portion of payments is released only after certificates of completion are issued, Edun operated more like a goalkeeper, trapping payments long after they were due.

When contractor complaints mounted, the President excised revenue generation, distribution and domestic debt management from Edun and transferred them to the junior minister, Doris Uzoka-Anite, who turned out to be a disaster and had to be swapped.

Meanwhile, across the cabinet, grievances about the delayed release of funds rose. For example, Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate told lawmakers that out of N218 billion appropriated for his ministry in the 2025 budget, only N36 million, less than one percent had been released.

Housing and Urban Development Minister Dangiwa, Works Minister David Umahi, and Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu, whose problem is deeper and more pathetic than money, also complained. I’m told that as far back as October, the President had decided that Edun’s time was up.

Where the buck stops

His health condition, the second probable reason, was the velvet over the iron fist. At 70, and after a long and distinguished career in the financial sector and later in politics, his struggles with failing health and an economy that demands full-speed performance were taking a toll on him. His removal had been some time in coming.

We may quibble about the real backstory all day, and the full version may never be known publicly, but one man who comes out looking good from this is the president. He has just sent an unlikely message: if Edun can go, then so can anyone.