For two weeks, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s septuagenarian president, has been out of action, receiving medical treatment in London for an undisclosed illness. His absence has sent the rumour mill of Africa’s most populous nation spinning, with frequent erroneous reports that the president is dead. The tragedy for Nigeria is that policymaking has been so ponderous during the 20 months since Mr Buhari took office that, dead or alive, it is not always easy to tell the difference.

Under Mr Buhari’s slow-blinking leadership, Africa’s largest economy has drifted into crisis. Brought low by the weak oil price, on which government revenues are woefully dependent, the system has been starved of dollars. That has driven businesses into the ground, people on to the margins and the economy into its worst recession in 25 years. What had been a growing middle class is being daily eviscerated. High inflation, especially for food, is damaging the poor in whose name Mr Buhari ran for office.

There are signs that Nigerians — among the most resilient and adaptive people on the continent — are losing patience. This week, there were small, but rowdy, protests in Lagos and Abuja, at which demonstrators complained about their “missing president”.

There is an irony that Mr Buhari, a retired major general, is missing in action. He ran the country as a military ruler in the mid-1980s after seizing power in a coup. In civilian guise, his leadership style has verged on the invisible. After winning power in 2015 on the fourth attempt at the ballot box, he set out at a pace that has marked his presidency: it took him six months to name a cabinet. Hopes that he had surrounded himself with a lean team of capable technocrats empowered to get policy cranking have come to naught. Policymaking — such that it is — has been crafted instead by a tiny cabal of loyal, less qualified, stalwarts. Mr Buhari has failed to articulate anything approaching a vision.

During his campaign, Nigeria’s soldier-turned-politician promised to train his sight on three main objectives: to improve security, crack down on corruption and diversify the oil-dependent economy. Progress on the first two has been patchy, and on the third dismal.

On security, Mr Buhari has managed to galvanise a demoralised army and make gains against Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation that had been metastasising beyond its northern base. Boko Haram has been pushed back into a north-eastern redoubt and across the border into Cameroon and Chad. But that displacement has been offset by security flare-ups elsewhere, most seriously in the Niger Delta where militants have been sabotaging oil production.

Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption drive can be boiled down to a few symbolic gestures and a few high-profile cases against members of the previous administration. Yet, systemically, little has changed. The confused exchange rate policy — in which the central bank doles out scarce dollars at an advantageous rate — is a recipe for opacity. The dollar shortage is killing off industry rather than nurturing it.
Read the full article here: https://www.ft.com/content/544e58ae-ed4e-11e6-ba01-119a44939bb6

Hmmm....we don enter one chance......on behalf of all of us that supported n campaigned for Buhari, accept our APOLOGY....WE ARE DEEPLY SORRY

I think he should not have run for president because

1) It will destroy his legacy and his legend. I said it would and that is why he should not have run for presidency but now, I think it is already well destroyed.

2) It is the office of the presidency that is making him sick. The stress is very much. As a popular American radio personality said about a week ago, there is a reason why every president leaving the white house has grey hair.

Na who financial times epp.
Nonsence.

Naija people will never learn.

His qualifications were in doubt from day one. But somehow, most people were blinded to that reality.
Look at where we are.

ZUBY77:
His qualifications were in doubt from day one. But somehow, most people were blinded to that reality.
Look at where we are.

So how did we fare under that phd holder.

Anijay1212:

So how did we fare under that phd holder.

High oil price under GEJ was the deodorant. As soon as oil price slumped, the economic stench oozes out. Many states becomes bankrupt, NO1 & GEJ started to borrow money to pay salary, oil marketers were owed for months. Federal contractors withdrew their services as some of them were not paid since 2012. Local and foreign debts was rising. External reserve was being depleted.. On and on it goes.
Underneath the nice smell of high oil price under Jonothing was a huge debt, outrageous looting, infrastructure decay and dumping ground of foreign goods.

the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. the article summarizes the 20 months tenure of this government.

please when is the part 2 of this movie "CHANGE" coming ?

?

Let me read this thing first

deji15:


High oil price under GEJ was the deodorant. As soon as oil price slumped, the economic stench oozes out. Many states becomes bankrupt, NO1 & GEJ started to borrow money to pay salary, oil marketers were owed for months. Federal contractors withdrew their services as some of them were not paid since 2012. Local and foreign debts was rising. External reserve was being depleted.. On and on it goes.
Underneath the nice smell of high oil price under Jonothing was a huge debt, outrageous looting, infrastructure decay and dumping ground of foreign goods.

FINANCIAL TIMES IS A BIAFRAPOBIC & AVENGEROUS NEWS PRINT BASED IN BREXIT ISLAND.

Financial times of London is run by IPAD yoot:
Says d resident zoneBs

What's left of Buhari to be finished by Financial Times?

Anijay1212:

So how did we fare under that phd holder.

Go to the street and ask that question.
You will get your answers sir.

ZUBY77:
His qualifications were in doubt from day one. But somehow, most people were blinded to that reality.
Look at where we are.

Most people were blinded it was just that uncle Goodluck messed the country up. That man Na criminal too and we all wanted a change.

The fact is that we Nigerians are tired of every old administration and seek a messiah, so we always wanna change not knowing say birds of the same feathers: Na the same mama born them

[img]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfkbmy_Sc9E[/img]

ipob propaganda...