THE INSIDER: How Wale Edun lost out to the Chagourys and finally bit the dust

President Bola Tinubu publicly wished several Nigerians a happy birthday this week — including Stella Okotete, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, Shola Oshunkeye, and Orji Uzor Kalu. Conspicuously missing from his list was Wale Edun, his minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy who clocked the landmark 70 on April 20.

A day later, he fired Edun from his cabinet.

But many Aso Rock insiders were not surprised by the turn of events — it was always coming. “The president asked Edun to leave honourably in October last year but he lobbied to keep his position,” an insider told TheCable. “Although he stayed back, the president told his aides: ‘As far as I am concerned, I have done send-off for Wale already.’ But for some reason, Edun managed to hang on.” Edun was effectively relegated thereafter, with Doris Uzoka-Anite, the junior minister, taking over three key functions from him: revenue generation, revenue distribution and domestic debt management.

That meant Edun could no longer oversee the monthly meeting of the federation account allocation committee (FAAC), although the January meeting chaired by Uzoka-Anite ended in chaos and a communique could not be issued for the first time.

Sensing that Uzoka-Anite may not be well suited for the job, the president appointed Taiwo Oyedele, a tax expert, as the new junior minister and redeployed her as minister of state, budget and economic planning. That, nevertheless, did not save Edun from the sack. He was to be fired two weeks ago, with a number of options considered as his replacement, including Zacchaeus Adedeji, executive chairman of the National Revenue Service (NRS), and Joseph Tegbe, chairman of the National Tax Policy Implementation Committee (NTPIC).

Some of Tinubu’s aides mounted pressure on the president but the plot failed for the second time.

Edun had stopped enjoying Tinubu’s confidence for a while, particularly after the payment of consultancy fees running into hundreds of billions of naira to a company whose ultimate beneficiary is a south-east governor who is always seen around the president.