Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has argued that President Bola Tinubu’s government inherited a fragile economy with the country on the verge of collapse. 

Wike made the claim on Friday when he featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today where he dismissed claims that the Tinubu government damaged the country’s economy.

 “He took over an economy that was gone; was totally gone,” Wike said during the show.

Tinubu took over power in May 2023 from his party man, Muhammadu Buhari, who ruled for eight years.

He immediately ended the fuel subsidy regime and later floated the naira, two policies that led to a rise in the cost of living.

There have been protests and criticism of the Tinubu government over the handling of the economy.

However, Wike is a member of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but is working with the Tinubu-led APC Federal Government, has defended the removal of the subsidy, and the president’s economic policies.

“Take, for example, the fuel subsidy removal. Everyone said this was a scam. So what do we do? He [Tinubu] came and said, ‘I will not allow this again. It has to go’.”

Wike admitted that while the move came with a lot of challenges, including the hike in the cost of the essential product from around N200 to about N1,000 per litre, state governments now have more funds to work with.

“But a lot of money will be put in the hands of states or the federating units,” the former governor of Rivers State said on the prime time show. “There’s so much, there’s so much money in the hands of the state, whether anybody likes it or not. There’s so much money.”