With only a few votes left to count, Muhammadu Buhari appears to have been elected president of Nigeria; a seismic result that ends the reign of the People’s Democratic Party, which has held power in Africa’s largest economy since its return to civilian rule in 1999.
Buhari, a former general who took power in a military coup in 1983, beat the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, whose government had been racked with corruption scandals and undermined by a failure to address an insurgency by the extremist group Boko Haram in the northeast.
The new president, who has rebuilt his image as an austere, quasi-spiritual figure and a ‘converted democrat’, inherits a number of complex and intertwined social, political and economic challenges.
The economy: Nigeria’s economy is in a dangerous place, following a collapse in oil prices that have weakened its fiscal position and undermined its currency. The relatively smooth passage of the election should restore some investor confidence in the short term, but the country still faces huge structural economic challenges, the greatest of which is the total dominance of the oil sector.
Nigeria is a fairly well diversified economy. An economic rebasing, which led to the gross domestic product being revised upwards to more than $500bn, showed an economy where services, agriculture and technology were large contributors to growth.
Main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari speaks after casting his vote at a polling station in the ‘Gidan Niyam Sakin Yara A ward’ at Daura in Katsina State on March 28, 2015. Voting began in Nigeria’s general election but delays were reported countrywide because of technical problems in accrediting electors. AFP PHOTO/PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)
However, more than 70 percent of government revenues come from the oil and gas sector, which makes up less than 15 percent of GDP. This mismatch has distorted the entire economy, concentrating money and power in a narrow, well-connected and heavily politicised demographic and stunting the development of other sectors. Addressing this will require a combination of institutional reform—such as fixing the tax administration—and political will in taking on entrenched elites and vested interests within Nigeria’s systems of governance.
International relations: In the run-up to the election, Western powers kept their cards close to their chests, although some diplomatic sources had been briefing behind the scenes that a Buhari presidency would have several major advantages over another Jonathan administration.
