Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to build on the foundations laid in his first term after winning four more years in office in last week’s acrimonious election. But his win could not hide the fact that many Nigerians did not vote for continuity in a country where much of the population is deeply disengaged from the political process.
The election handed the president a second chance to address the country’s myriad problems, but his mandate will be limited by his backing from less than one-fifth of eligible voters.
The president won by 56 per cent to 41 per cent, but turnout was under 36 per cent. The decision by so many voters to stay away from the polls reflected Nigerians’ disenchantment with the political class and its ability to improve their daily lives.
In a speech on Wednesday, Mr Buhari pledged to focus on fighting corruption, national security and diversifying the economy — three issues on which he campaigned in 2015.
“We have laid down the foundation and we are committed to seeing matters to the end,” he said. But rather than seeing progress in Mr Buhari’s first years, critics describe a series of missed opportunities.
Mr Buhari has presided over a languishing economy, but his infrastructure spending and reputation for incorruptibility helped him to a commanding victory over former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, a wealthy businessman who had pitched himself as the private sector candidate.
Amaka Anku, Africa director for the Eurasia Group, said Nigeria was beset by “voter apathy [and] disillusionment with government”.
“Government in Nigeria provides very little in terms of social services — barely provides security, electricity, water, or roads [and] infrastructure,” he said. “For too long, government has simply been where politicians went to loot — that’s changing very slowly but will take time for people to trust it.”
Mr Abubakar promised a legal challenge to what he called a “sham election”, alleging the sorts of widespread fraud and rigging that have plagued past elections. But observers said the official results tracked the most reliable parallel data available.
The economy
Mr Buhari took office just as an oil price crash crippled Nigeria’s economy, where crude still accounts for over half of government revenues. But many economists argue that his policies exacerbated the recession that followed and the sluggish recovery since.
Unemployment has nearly trebled to over 23 per cent under Mr Buhari and another fifth of Nigerians are underemployed. The stock market has been among the world’s worst performing and the country has become home to 87m people living in extreme poverty.
Charlie Robertson, chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said: “Investors are not expecting a change of course in Nigeria.”
The business community does not see a natural ally in Mr Buhari, whose statist views have been well-known since his days as a military dictator in the 1980s.
But there’s “cautious optimism [among business elites] that he will be forced to find policy momentum because of the tough economic conditions,” said Bismarck Rewane, chief executive of Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company. “It’s time for the heavy lifting. The economic policy thrust will have to change from rhetoric to tangible impact.”
The term of central bank governor Godwin Emefiele expires in the middle of this year and his reappointment would signal approval of a tenure that included the decision to slap an $8bn fine on telecoms company MTN, which was widely panned as needlessly aggressive and harmful to Nigeria’s reputation.
The president will also need to address the parlous state of the bloated state oil company. Last year he refused to sign a decades-in-the-making oil reform bill that is widely seen as crucial to spurring investment in a moribund industry.
Corruption
Close advisers say that the president’s perceived hostility to the private sector is linked to his disdain for public graft, as the two have been inextricably linked in Nigeria for generations.
The president is widely seen as a clean politician in a country known for massive corruption scandals. He was elected in 2015 on a wave of outrage over multiple multibillion-dollar scams under the previous government and set about strengthening anti-corruption efforts. But critics say he has only targeted his political opponents and has yet to claim many high-profile convictions.
Mr Buhari has endorsed politicians facing corruption allegations, including one who appeared in a viral hidden-camera video collecting stacks of hundred dollar bills. According to a February Gallup poll, 84 per cent of Nigerians believe government corruption is widespread, down just 2 percentage points from 2014.
Security
Mr Buhari’s final pledge of bringing security to a volatile nation remains unfulfilled. While the Boko Haram insurgency that terrorised wide swaths of Nigeria’s north in 2014 has largely been isolated to a single state, the group continues to slaughter soldiers and civilians. Nearly every corner of the country is afflicted by some sort of violent crisis.
Mr Buhari’s inability to get a handle on security, despite his military pedigree, was highlighted by scores of deaths across Nigeria in the days around the election. Many were linked to Boko Haram, banditry or long-simmering ethnic conflicts; others were election-related. But by the standards of Nigerian history the election was conducted relatively peacefully.
Neil Munshi, FT
