Wale Edun’s Economic Record under Tinubu – A Lesson Note for Usman Isyaku and Co-Travellers, by Gimba Kakanda

When Mr. Wale Edun took charge as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy in 2023, Nigeria’s debt-service-to-revenue ratio was 96.3% and could have worsened further without correction. The World Bank also found that, in 2022, foreign-exchange revenues were being transferred at an official rate 53% below the parallel market, creating large forgone revenues, while the fuel subsidy regime continued to delay or absorb public cash that should have reached the federation. In plain English, the old order was rewarding arbitrage far more than production. Fuel subsidies and exchange-rate distortions were functioning as feeding bottles for politically advantaged intermediaries, while the state itself was being starved of usable revenue, and there is no formidable presidential candidate in the line-up of the 2023 election who could have saved the economy without ending the currency round-tripping and the scam pulled off under fuel subsidy.

On the economy Mr. Edun inherited, two numbers capture the point of departure. The first is the 96.3% debt-service-to-revenue ratio underlined above, which meant Nigeria was perilously close to a classic fiscal trap in which almost every additional naira of retained revenue is pre-committed to debt service, leaving little room for investment, wages, social spending or shock absorption. The second numerical nightmare was that Nigeria entered 2023 with external deficits, a fragmented FX market and a consolidated fiscal deficit that the World Bank later estimated at 5.4% of GDP for 2023. That is why the argument that “nothing happened” under Wale Edun does not survive contact with the data we are going to cite here, and I have already done the heavy lifting for you, even if one strongly dislikes the pain of the adjustment.

So, what really improved under Wale Edun? The cleanest way to read Edun’s tenure is by following the dates. In the wake of 2024, it was established that Nigeria’s real GDP growth accelerated to 3.40% from 2.74% in 2023; fourth-quarter growth reached 3.84%; the consolidated fiscal deficit narrowed from 5.4% of GDP in 2023 to 3.0% of GDP in 2024; and Nigeria posted a $6.83 billion balance-of-payments surplus after deficits in 2022 and 2023. By the end of 2024, we gathered that Nigeria’s net foreign-exchange reserves rose to $23.11 billion from $3.99 billion at end-2023, while gross reserves rose to $40.19 billion; federation-wide revenues rose sharply, and federal revenues increased from ₦6.8 trillion, or 2.9% of GDP, in 2023 to ₦12.4 trillion, or 4.5% of GDP, in 2024.

Additionally, federal government interest payments fell dramatically from 83.8% of federal revenue in 2023 to 41.1% in 2024, which is one of the clearest indicators that Nigeria moved away from the edge of a fiscal squeeze in which debt service was swallowing almost everything. Nigeria’s non-oil revenue also rose to 9.2% of GDP in 2024, while total revenues and grants rose to 14.4% of GDP, showing that the improvement was not only about oil prices or exchange-rate translation effects, but also about a broader revenue base. Gross national savings rose from 31.8% of GDP in 2023 to 39.6% in 2024, while investment rose from 30.0% to 30.4% of GDP, with public investment increasing from 3.2% to 4.8% of GDP.

Again, in 2025, the nation’s real GDP growth improved to 3.87% and fourth-quarter growth hit 4.07%; net reserves climbed further to $34.8 billion and gross reserves to $45.71 billion; capital inflows jumped by nearly 90% to $23.22 billion; and the Nigerian equity market returned 51.19%, with end-year equity market capitalisation at ₦99.38 trillion. Growth in the first half of 2025 also remained stronger than in the comparable period of 2024, with the World Bank saying Nigeria’s economy expanded by 3.9% year on year in H1 2025, up from 3.5% in H1 2024, driven by services, non-oil industries, better oil production and some agricultural improvement, which shows continuity of recovery rather than a one-off 2024 bounce. This year, Nigeria’s gross reserves had risen to $50.45 billion by mid-February; inflation had fallen for eleven straight months before ticking up from 15.06% in February to 15.38% in March 2026; and Fitch Ratings affirmed Nigeria at B after first moving the outlook to positive in 2024 and then upgrading the sovereign in 2025.

So, where were the gains most real under Mr. Edun? The strongest part of Edun’s record is the external rebalancing. Nigeria moved from a balance-of-payments deficit of $3.32 billion in 2022 and $3.34 billion in 2023 to a $6.83 billion surplus in 2024. The current and capital accounts together posted a $17.22 billion surplus, supported by a $13.17 billion goods-trade surplus. Remittances rose 8.9% to $20.93 billion; gas exports rose 48.3%; non-oil exports rose 24.6%; fuel imports fell 23.2%; and non-oil imports fell 12.6%. By 2025, the World Bank still saw a current-account surplus of 4.8% of GDP, which suggests the turnaround was not a one-quarter fluke.

The second clear gain is fiscal repair. The World Bank found that consolidated federation revenues rose from ₦16.8 trillion, or 7.2% of GDP, in 2023 to ₦31.9 trillion, or 11.5% of GDP, in 2024, helping to shrink the consolidated deficit to 3.0% of GDP. At the federal level, revenue rose from ₦6.8 trillion to ₦12.4 trillion. The Bank attributed the improvement above all to three things: the windfall effect of FX unification on naira-denominated public receipts, stronger tax administration through digital systems such as TaxProMax, and policy changes that curtailed old leakage channels. In 2025, gross FAAC revenues rose again from 7.9% to 8.5% of GDP. The IMF’s numbers also reinforce this fiscal improvement: federal government interest payments fell from 83.8% of federal revenue in 2023 to 41.1% in 2024, while non-oil revenue rose to 9.2% of GDP and total revenues and grants rose to 14.4% of GDP, showing a broader and healthier revenue effort.

A third achievement is that our state governments became better funded. For the 34 states with available budget implementation reports, aggregate revenues rose from ₦7.2 trillion in 2023 to ₦13.9 trillion in 2024; FAAC revenues to states nearly doubled from ₦4.8 trillion to ₦9.5 trillion; and state capital expenditure more than doubled from ₦3.3 trillion to ₦7.4 trillion. In 2025, the World Bank said state-level capital spending rose further to ₦11.2 trillion, equivalent to 2.5% of GDP. This is one of the most under-appreciated consequences of the reform package: whatever one thinks of the politics, subnationals suddenly had far more fiscal room than they had under the previous settlement.

The fourth gain is restored market confidence, albeit more in portfolio and fixed-income channels than in long-term productive FDI. Nigeria’s capital inflows rose to $12.32 billion in 2024 and then nearly doubled to $23.22 billion in 2025; in 2025, 85% of those inflows were portfolio money, especially money-market instruments and bonds. The sovereign also moved through a rare ratings cycle: Fitch shifted to positive in 2024, upgraded in 2025 and affirmed in 2026; Moody’s Ratings upgraded Nigeria to B3 in May 2025 on better fiscal and external positions; and S&P Global Ratings revised the outlook to positive in November 2025. On the domestic market, Nigerian Exchange Group reported a 51.19% equity-market rally in 2025 and end-year equity market capitalisation of ₦99.38 trillion. Those are not the footprints of an economy with zero measurable results. Continued implementation of the revised Nigerian Capital Market Master Plan, with its emphasis on deeper market breadth, stronger investor protection, improved efficiency and greater use of technology, also formed part of the institutional reform architecture behind that capital-market rebound.

The earnings of several of Nigeria’s largest firms also rebounded sharply under Tinubu’s reform period, and what makes that rebound striking is not only the size of the profits but the improvement in profit margins after the stress of the immediate pre-stabilisation years: Dangote Cement moved from ₦455.6 billion profit after tax on ₦2.21 trillion revenue in 2023, a margin of about 20.6%, to ₦503.2 billion on ₦3.58 trillion in 2024, a margin of about 14.1%, before rising to ₦1.015 trillion on ₦4.31 trillion in 2025, lifting its margin to about 23.6%; BUA Cement rose from ₦48.97 billion profit after tax on ₦583.41 billion revenue in the first nine months of 2024, a margin of about 8.4%, to ₦289.9 billion on ₦858.73 billion in the same period of 2025, a margin of about 33.8%; MTN Nigeria swung from a ₦514.9 billion loss on ₦2.37 trillion revenue in 9M 2024, a negative margin of about -21.7%, to a ₦750.2 billion profit on ₦3.73 trillion revenue in 9M 2025, a positive margin of about 20.1%; and Airtel Africa improved from $79 million profit on $2.37 billion revenue in the half-year to September 2024, a margin of about 3.3%, to $376 million on $2.98 billion in the half-year to September 2025, a margin of about 12.6%. In other words, the point is not simply that these firms made more money in nominal terms, but that, under the stabilisation phase, they converted a much larger share of revenue into bottom-line earnings, which is precisely why the profit recovery is difficult to dismiss as a statistical accident.

There was also a broadening in sectoral growth, though not evenly. Fourth-quarter 2024 growth was led by services at 5.37%, with agriculture at 1.76% and industry at 2.00%. By fourth-quarter 2025, the pattern had become more balanced: agriculture accelerated to 4.0%, industry to 3.88%, and services still grew 4.15%. This matters because it suggests the recovery was no longer being carried by one or two isolated pockets. It also supports the argument that FX reform, better liquidity conditions and a reduction in some distortions were beginning to feed into productive sectors rather than only financial prices.

This does not mean that all was well with Nigeria, and so the fair criticism of the government would have been that the process of stabilisation came with severe household pain. Inflation was 28.92% in December 2023 and 29.90% in January 2024 on the old CPI base, after rebasing. But it fell steadily through 2025 and early 2026, though it was still 15.38% in March 2026 and had just ticked up again after eleven straight months of decline. So it is fair to say that price stability improved.

You could be fair to criticise the government’s labour-market picture and our generational weakness, which is welfare. So, yes, while Nigeria’s macro story improved, the welfare story did not yet catch up, and this is why it is fair for the nation to demand more, and these microeconomic expectations cannot be attained without the reforms pursued so far. This is why Mr Edun’s record in stabilisation and confidence restoration cannot be wished away as failure.

So, in what areas has this government fared better in comparison to its predecessors? For a start, it took over from a government burdened by a debt-service-to-revenue ratio of about 96% and took it below 50%. Net reserves rose from $3.99 billion in 2023 to $34.8 billion at end-2025; and deficit monetisation was curtailed. On these indicators, Tinubu’s early reform years are clearly stronger than the immediate pre-2023 baseline.

Tinubu’s record is also more impressive than the late years of his immediate predecessors, Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari, on exchange-rate reform, ratings momentum and state-government liquidity. The World Bank said the reforms produced a more unified, market-reflective exchange rate and strengthened the external position; the ratings agencies progressively rewarded the adjustment; and state revenues and capital spending rose sharply. On all three fronts, the current administration has posted a more forceful stabilisation story than Nigeria had in the years immediately before 2023.