Nigeria looks for a miracle
A record 93.5 million Nigerians will this week choose among 18 candidates to replace president Muhammadu Buhari, who has reached his two-term limit. Frontrunners include Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, and Peter Obi, a relative outsider from the Labour Party. The election comes at a “pivotal juncture” for the country, amidst “record unemployment and inflation, a massive debt burden, fuel shortages, worsening security conditions, endemic corruption and crumbling public services”, says Elliot Smith on CNBC.
Nigeria’s election matters to the rest of the world, say David Pilling and Aanu Adeoye in the Financial Times. Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa and, with a median age of 18, has a population predicted to nearly double to 400 million in the next 25 years. “Crisis-ridden Nigeria is no longer the stabilising force it once was in a region where coups, terrorism and Russian influence are proliferating.” A recent survey found that 89% of Nigerians think their country is heading in the wrong direction after eight years of drift and rising corruption under Buhari. None of the frontrunners reassure on this front. Obi reportedly failed to declare assets in tax havens,
Abubakar is linked to a $40m transfer of “suspect funds”, and the US government froze Tinubu’s assets in the 1990s on the grounds they were linked to drugs. All deny wrongdoing.
Whoever wins will struggle to stimulate growth, given that Nigeria spends 80% of its tax receipts on debt servicing, says Alexander Kozul-Wright in Aljazeera. Nevertheless, it does have a US-style “swagger and entrepreneurial drive”, with Lagos tech start-ups attracting more capital than “anywhere else” in Africa, says the FT. Even so, there’s no escaping the fact that much of the current electoral excitement is “down to raw hope”. Nigerians are “looking for a miracle”.