What Lies ahead of Buhari’s Second Term

President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election in the tightly competitive poll that saw him emerging victorious early morning of Wednesday is set to meet quite unanswered range of questions. Buhari was nick named Mr. Honesty after he launched his campaigns on a honesty note of sweeping out all the pending problems in Africa’s big economy Nigeria.

First and foremost, the breadth and depth of corruption is so great, it affects so many aspects of public life that making serious inroads into the problem would require a focus, energy and application that was lacking in President Buhari’s first term.

The second problem he faces in fighting corruption is having the necessary political support. There is undoubted public backing but Mr Buhari’s party is compromised by senior members suspected of enriching themselves through graft. The fear is that across the board the looters will carry on pretty much as normal.

Economically, ending the dependency on oil revenues needs to happen at a much faster pace. The World Bank has predicted sluggish economic growth: 2.2% for the coming year in a country with unemployment of more than 20% and nearly half the population living in extreme poverty.

President Buhari also faces an array of security threats from clashes between farmers and herdsmen in the Middle Belt, continuing instability in the Niger Delta and – most worrying of all – a revived threat from Islamic extremists Boko Haram in the north of the country.

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