“President Buhari, I have said, has not disappointed me because the areas which we knew he was strong, he has performed fairly well,” Obasanjo told BBC’s Focus on Africa, singling out Buhari’s scorecard in the fight against corruption and the Boko Haram insurgency.
But the former leader conceded that not “everyone will be satisfied” with Buhari’s anti-corruption war.
Recall that Buhari was Ushered into government in 2015, largely, on the wings of promises to reposition the country by fighting corruption, improving security and remodeling the economy, President Buhari has had to deal with an economic recession that lasted more than a year.
Nigeria’s economy receded at the end of Q1 in 2016 after falling oil
prices ate deep into the country’s earnings and caused the naira to
weaken, thereby causing inflation to spiral upward. Spates of attacks on
oil installations in the Niger Delta by militants, who were protesting
for better deals from the government, almost crippled oil production.
However, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics announced earlier in the week that the country has exited recession after the economy notched up 0.55% growth in Q2 of 2017.
“In the second quarter of 2017, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 0.55% (year-on-year) in real terms, indicating the emergence of the economy from recession after five consecutive quarters of contraction since Q1 2016,” the NBS said.
While appreciable progress has also been recorded in the fight
against Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, former president Obasanjo said
the fight against the jihadists cannot be totally won until the
government addresses the root causes of the insurgency.
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