The enormously influential weekly
magazine, The Economist, headquartered
in the United Kingdom, described the
former Nigerian President Goodluck
Jonathan as an “ineffectual buffoon” during this
week’s print article titled Crude Tactics.
The publication of this article comes during Mr.
Jonathan’s global tour. Earlier this week he
spoke in Geneva, Switzerland to members of the
press club. Last week Mr. Jonathan visited the
United States where he met with supporters and
attend the Presidential Precinct which was held
in Virginia.
According to The Economist, the Buhari
“government has cracked down on corruption,
which had flourished under the previous
president, Goodluck Jonathan, an ineffectual
buffoon who let politicians and their cronies fill
their pockets with impunity.”
The remainder of the article focuses on the
struggles of the Nigerian economy, which they
argue stems mainly from the drop in price of oil
and ineffective monetary policies.
The article
noted that economic growth in Nigeria for 2015
was about 3 percent, half that of 2014, and that
the stock market has also halved in value since
2014.
The Economist noted that President Buhari’s
challenges, which include security concerns from
Boko Haram, mirror the same he inherited when
he removed the former government in the 1908s
in a coup. “The problems are almost identical,”
the magazine wrote.
The article concluded by saying that the
economic crunch Nigeria is currently feeling “is
one that Nigeria has been through before—under
the then youthful Mr. Buhari. Then, as now, he
refused to let the market set the value of the
currency. Instead he shut out imports, causing
the legal import trade to fall by almost 50% and
killing much of Nigeria’s nascent industry in the
process.”
“Today, as in the 1980s, the president is making
a bad situation worse,” according to the
Economist.
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