President Muhammadu Buhari has made sweeping changes in the oil sector during his first 100 days in office but has done little to convince experts that he has a clear strategy for Africa’s biggest economy, Reuters
reports.
As Buhari prepares to mark 100 days in office on Saturday, his critics have said that he is moving too slowly and chief amongst their complaints is his decision not to appoint a cabinet until later this month, thereby putting the economic policy of the country in limbo, and leaving the likes of the central bank to fill the vacuum. “The absence of a cabinet, a team … has made it hard for him to set out a specific program,” said a diplomat, who did not want to be named.
Nigeria’s annual GDP growth in the second quarter was less than half that of a year earlier as low oil prices, combined with months of uncertainty around the March general elections, took their toll. The naira has also lost around 15 percent in the last year, with devaluations in November and February. The lack of direction also appears to have weighed on foreign investment, already depressed by a slowdown in China’s economy and the prospect of a looming U.S. interest rate rise.
Furthermore, although he has prioritized the oil sector, Buhari has so far shied away from scrapping an expensive and fraud-ridden fuel subsidy scheme. Also, certain moves, such as banning around 100 foreign oil tankers from Nigerian waters, have been imposed with little clarity of the reasons behind the move.
But Buhari’s supporters say that he has needed time to analyze the inner workings of ministries that have been run exclusively by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) since the return to civilian rule in 1999, in a bid to sanitize them in the long run.
They also point to his restructuring of the state oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), whose board Buhari sacked in June, when he appointed Dr. Emmanuel Kachikwu, a former ExxonMobil executive as managing director. The NNPC has been accused of failing to account for tens of billions of dollars in the last few years and so the reforms so far have been hailed as a massive effort in ridding the oil sector of its corrupt toga.
