The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, on Thursday said Nigeria was on the brink of fiscal collapse before the emergence of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in 2023, but that decisive reforms have since helped stabilise the economy.
Alake made the assertion in Abuja at the 2026 NRS-MSMD Joint Stakeholder Sensitisation for the North Central zone, where he reviewed the country’s economic trajectory and ongoing fiscal reforms.
He said the administration inherited a fragile economy weighed down by unsustainable borrowing, weak production capacity and overdependence on imports, a situation he claimed had pushed the nation into a dangerous financial position.
According to him, prior to 2023, the Federal Government had been forced to rely on borrowed funds to meet recurrent obligations, including the payment of civil servants’ salaries, rather than investing in capital projects that could stimulate growth.
“When a nation borrows to pay salaries, there is no development,” Alake said, adding that the situation reflected deeper structural weaknesses in the economy.
He further claimed that when borrowing options became constrained due to declining credit ratings, government resorted to printing large volumes of currency, a move he said worsened inflation and weakened the naira.
Alake also pointed to what he described as a long period of economic misalignment, where Nigeria shifted from local production strength in earlier decades to heavy dependence on imported goods.
He argued that urgent policy decisions, including the removal of fuel subsidy, were necessary to prevent a total economic breakdown at the time the current administration assumed office.
