Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari took office a month ago on a wave of hope that he would quickly deal with a deepening economic crisis and an Islamist insurgency in the north.
So far, he hasn’t met those expectations according to Bloomberg.
While Africa’s biggest oil producer has been hit by a 40 percent fall in petroleum prices in the past year that has slowed economic growth and weakened the currency, Buhari, 72, has delayed naming a cabinet until September.
As the momentum of being the first opposition candidate to win power at the ballot box fades, critics are mocking him as a sluggish elderly man, or “Baba Go Slow.”
Buhari has acknowledged the crisis, saying last month that his government is facing severe financial strain, with a treasury that’s “virtually empty,” and his party is calling for patience.
Yet his lack of urgency in tackling economic woes could leave Nigeria badly adrift, said John Ashbourne, an economist at Capital Economics in London.
“Every week that Nigeria goes without a cabinet increases the chance that it will face a dangerous shock — whether a revenue collapse or a currency crisis,” Ashbourne said by phone Tuesday.
“Leaving the federation without a finance minister would be a questionable choice at the best of times; doing so during a period of economic instability is difficult to explain.”
Nigeria’s currency, twice devalued in the past year in an attempt to cope with lower oil income, has weakened 7.7 percent against the dollar this year on the interbank market.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that growth will slow to 4.8 percent this year from 6.1 percent in 2014.
The naira was trading at 198.85 against the U.S. dollar at 2.38 p.m. in Lagos Wednesday, just as the Nigerian Stock Exchange Index hit its 2015 peak of 35,728.12 on April 2, the day after Buhari was declared …Read More
Source:: New Mail
