Africa’s largest democracy votes as world’s largest democracy falters

Behind the high fives of the well delivered State of the Union address, his visit to Kiev followed by the people who actually cut the checks, his Treasury Secretary, US President Joe Biden is facing two global existential threats and is struggling to readjust and project American power.

Off the table for now is the Middle East which dominated his first year in office as an Israeli liberal coalition lost power to an ultra-conservative coalition led by five-time premier Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

His trip to Saudi Arabia as oil prices escalated failed to immediately relieve pressure on the pump but two simultaneous actions, the release of oil from America’s oil reserves and expanding the electric car tax credit first introduced by Barack Obama have returned global oil prices back to the norm, mid-way.

Consumers globally are pinching their pennies waiting to see if inflationary tendencies come under control. Banks everywhere are posting interest. The only real segment affected by this trend of affairs are governments whose finances were ravaged by the pandemic and are yet to recover.

Pension funds that help governments manage their cash flows are on their behind. Expect players like the NSSF if they are using sound actuarial practices to warn of the risks on their huge balance sheets. Profligate spenders now owe 70 percent of their debt to such players like the pension funds.

This weekend Nigeria, home to 195 million people, went to the polls to elect the successor to President Muhammad Buhari. Gen Buhari like Gen Olusegun Obasanjo has had two turns at the presidency after overthrowing Shehu Shagari from 1983 to 1985 when he in turn was overthrown by Gen Ibrahim Babangida. Obasanjo had returned Nigeria to civilian rule in 1979 and benefited from this brave move by himself later serving two terms as Nigeria’s elected President.

In 2023, Nigeria is experimenting with a third force, the Labour Party led by a former Governor Peter Obi that swept the polls in Lagos. Bola Tinubu, the ruling party All Progressives Congress has won the election, defeating former vice president Atiku Abubaker of the People’s Democratic Party.

For Nigeria it’s the first election in nearly 30 years without a military strongman on the ballot. Buhari partly suffering from feeble health, has not been able to stop the onslaught of Boko Haram and other militants from wreaking havoc to Africa’s largest economy.  Exhausted voters facing an economic crisis mostly stayed away. Just 27 percent of voters turned out to vote.

Nigeria displaced South Africa as the continent’s largest economy even while its own economy has been shrinking due to mismanagement, collapse of agriculture, a mercantile culture and a mass exodus of young people abroad. If tiny Entebbe seemed under siege from burka wearing economic immigrants, Nigeria is a many times more than that.

Fed up of inflation, Nigeria’s young professionals have voted with their feet, choosing stability over uncertainty. We feel Nigeria, but in underwhelming proportion, music, movies, petty business and a few continental operations like UBA Bank, Dangote Cement but little more. 

As America prepares to engage China, it’s watching worsening prognoses of the Russia-European conflict. First Russia no longer has the capacity to win the war even in 100 years, but neither does Ukraine. Russia has the nuclear deterrent a prospect that scares the rest of Europe.

Putin’s Russia is boxed in by the West hence the game of Russian roulette. There is another sideshow between India and China. India’s economy though is much smaller but it will soon overtake China as the world’s biggest population.

In 2022, India overtook the UK to become the world’s fifth largest economy. As India tries its hand in the export market, the rest of the world is watching with alarm at the more nationalist stances of the BJP, the Hindu nationalists in power who are steadily diluting the democratic safeguards of its post-independence political order.

In 2023, Nigeria at least diluted the two-party oligarchy, APC and PDP– the two parties formed by Babangida to compete for power in 1989. Government issued new currency notes ahead of the election and bribing shifted to the greenback, a game of Nigerian master-play.

Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. 

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