The two main contenders in Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday, February 16, have had their last says on why they deserve to lead Africa’s largest economy for the next four years.
Official campaigning ended Thursday and incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari took the opportunity to deliver a national address, wherein he vowed that the elections will take place in a “secure and peaceful atmosphere”.
“It was indeed such free, fair and peaceful elections that made it possible for our government to emerge, despite the fact that we were contesting against a long-standing incumbent party,” Buhari said in the 20-minute-long address.
After assuring Nigerians, the diplomatic community and all foreign election observers of their safety and full protection, the 76-year-old proceeded to reel out a list of achievements of his administration, from tackling corruption to diversifying the economy.
“The recovery of the economy from recession is complete and Nigeria is back on the path of steady growth,” Buhari claimed.
“The key to creating more jobs lies in accelerating this momentum of economic growth. Happily, we have succeeded in making the fundamental changes necessary for this acceleration, and we are now beginning to see the efforts bearing fruit,” he said.
GDP figures published by the state-funded National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) this week showed that the economy expanded 1.93 percent in 2018, from 0.8 percent in 2017.
Despite the improved GDP reading, the economy has gone nowhere in per capita terms which implies that Nigerians are growing poorer.
Economic growth has printed lower than the country’s annual birth rate of about 2.6 percent since 2016. That means GDP per capita has shrunk in the past three years.
Unemployment has also soared to a six-year high of 23 percent under Buhari’s watch.
In a sign of the increased misery of Nigerians, a Brookings report said in 2018 that Nigeria had surpassed India as the poverty capital of the world, despite having less than a third of India’s population.
“His message should have been restricted to an assurance of a peaceful and fair election, rather than give himself an unfair advantage over the other presidential candidates,” a business leader said.
Buhari’s main contender, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was not privileged enough to deliver a national broadcast.
Using his twitter handle, however, the 72-year-old urged Nigerians to come out in their numbers to vote.
“On Saturday 16th, let’s remember, a vote for PDP is a vote for a better life. Go out, vote and defend your vote, and let’s get Nigeria working again,” Atiku tweeted.
Nigeria’s presidential elections could go down as one of the most fiercely contested since the country’s return to democracy in 1999.
Some 87 million Nigerians could head to the polls, if all those who are registered have collected their voting cards – 8 million were still uncollected in January – and care to make the effort.
In 2015, the total number of voters captured in INEC’s Electronic Voters Register (EVR) was about 68.8 million.
Of this, less than half (41 percent) voted. To put it bluntly, over 40 million Nigerians did not vote in 2015.
In the all-important presidential race, 73 candidates will be on the ballot but only two stand any chance – incumbent President Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Vice President Abubakar of the PDP.
Both are backed by powerful political machines.
The APC, which backs Buhari, and Abubakar’s PDP don’t operate on a traditional ideological left-
right continuum, according to a report by international news media, Financial Times, Thursday.
Instead, the parties appear to function largely as vehicles for state capture, through which the country’s resources can be used to fund vast patronage networks.
Their policy positions have tended to be broad and similar centred on state-driven development.
So fluid are the parties that Abubakar has switched back and forth multiple times – in the last election, he part funded the Buhari campaign, allowing the former general to use his private jet.
But in January, Abubakar outlined the difference between him and the president.
Abubakar wants to privatise state assets, lower corporate taxes and attract foreign direct investment. He also says he wants to float the naira, which the central bank has spent billions of dollars propping up at what critics call an artificially strong rate of N360 to the dollar for more than a year.
He says one of his top priorities will be passing decades-in-the-making oil sector reforms that are widely seen as essential to spurring investment in the moribund industry.
Buhari has refused to sign a section of the reforms into law in part, critics say, because it would dilute the power of the executive branch.
The president is sticking to his state-led, bottom-up approach to development, focusing on agriculture, small business and infrastructure.
He is campaigning as the candidate of the masses, in keeping with his almost cult-like following in the country’s populous north.
While their campaign promises differ widely, it’s not clear whether a victory for either side will produce markedly different economic outcomes given the country’s immense structural challenges, says Adriaan du Toit, sub-Saharan Africa economist for AllianceBernstein.
“The significant dependence on oil means that the next president’s [ability to enact] reforms will be very much aligned with what happens to oil prices in the next couple of years,” he adds.
Even critics concede Buhari was dealt a bad hand, taking office just as the oil price crashed. But many economists believe he exacerbated the recession that followed.
At a meeting of business people in Lagos last weekend, he said his government had come into power in 2015 focused on three priorities: national security, tackling “rampant corruption” and improving the economy. He seemed to concede that progress had been slow.
“These three priorities, if addressed, will completely transform Nigeria to a diversified, inclusive and competitive economy,” he was quoted as saying in local media.
“But this is not an overnight transition. We are not only transforming systems and processes, but we are also changing hearts and minds,” Buhari had said.
Hearts and minds are hard to measure. But a host of economic indicators paint a dismal picture of Buhari’s stewardship.
During his tenure, unemployment has soared from 8.3 percent to more than 23 percent, with another fifth of Nigerians underemployed; the stock market is the world’s worst performing, falling by more than half in dollar terms; and the country became home to the most people living in extreme poverty – defined as living on less than $1.90 per day – 87 million, surpassing India, a country with six times its population.
Buhari’s economic woes have allowed his rival to argue that his success in business makes him perfectly qualified to, as his campaign slogan says, “get Nigeria working again”.
LOLADE AKINMURELE
