ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: Nigerian voters caught between a rock and hard place
Both President Buhari and opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar are not up to the task of leading the country after elections on February 16
Nigeria will hold its sixth presidential election since 1999 on February 16, with 84-million prospective voters set to take part in Africa’s largest democratic exercise. The 2015 polls were historic in achieving the first democratic change of government in the country’s history. However, in the past four years the lackadaisical president, Muhammadu Buhari, has spent a total of five months in a British hospital (leading to rumours that he is now using a Sudanese body double, Jubril, to campaign for him) and there are continuing accusations that the president has pursued corruption selectively. Buhari’s economic recovery and growth plan envisages tackling Nigeria’s large infrastructural deficit through building roads and railways and promoting industrialisation, with the aim of creating 15-million jobs and achieving a 7% growth rate by 2020. The government has, however, come no way near achieving these goals. Unemployment stands at 23.1%, with more than 10-million youths (who constitu...
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