Wike Explains How Escaping the TSA Unlocked Abuja’s Massive Road Boom and Vows to Finish 16-Year-Old Abandoned Project

The Federal Capital Territory is experiencing an unprecedented construction revolution because President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has completely discarded slow, old-school bureaucratic processes and treated public administration like a serious commercial operation.

The FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, pulled back the curtain on the secret financial strategy keeping heavy machinery moving on the streets during a comprehensive media interactive session in Abuja. Wike addressed a wide array of urban issues, ranging from hidden funding streams to incoming crackdowns on street hoodlums and the fast-tracked completion of historically abandoned commuter routes.

According to Wike, the biggest game-changer for the capital city was a bold structural intervention by the President, who approved the complete removal of the FCT Administration from the federal government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) framework. The minister explained that under the old arrangement, local revenues were constantly trapped in central bureaucratic pipelines, starving contractors of funds and grinding major structural developments to a painful halt.

By breaking free from those administrative chains, the FCT has successfully transitioned into a modern, self-sustaining financial model.

“The President saw that governance is business, and this business must succeed at all costs,” Minister Nyesom Wike explained to reporters. “He pulled us entirely out of the TSA framework. Because of that, we can now approach commercial financial institutions, sit down and negotiate with them, and tie our Internally Generated Revenue directly to these credit lines. We don’t have to fold our hands and wait for months until we get hundreds of billions in raw cash from the center; the banks pay our construction partners directly, the contractors keep working day and night, and the jobs just keep moving.”

This newly gained financial fluidity has completely restored the confidence of major engineering multinational corporations working in Nigeria, allowing the ministry to rapidly deliver massive road expansions that were originally drawn up decades ago. Wike pointed out that more than 70 percent of the projects his cabinet has commissioned were actually inherited headaches that had been left entirely abandoned by previous administrations.

A prime example is the long-suffering Apo-Karshi Road project. First awarded to contractors in 2010, the vital alternative route sat abandoned for 16 years while thousands of daily commuters endured brutal traffic bottlenecks trying to get into the city center. Wike promised frustrated residents that the long wait is finally coming to an absolute end, guaranteeing that the road will be fully paved, completed, and officially opened before the end of December.

The minister also used the media parley to send a final, uncompromising warning to illegal roadside traders, mechanics, and informal operators whose makeshift shanties have taken over newly built traffic corridors, particularly across flashpoints in Wuse 2 and Area 1. Defending his aggressive demolition squads, Wike flatly rejected public arguments that high inflation justifies setting up illegal storefronts on public pathways.

Insisting that an orderly, secure capital city cannot coexist with chaos, the minister warned that a specialized security task force has already been cleared to dismantle all unauthorized structures and sweep hoodlums off the streets. By combining strict law enforcement with aggressive, business-minded project execution, the administration is determined to transform Abuja into a highly structured, world-class capital city that works for its residents.