GOODLUCK JONATHAN BECOMES NIGERIA’S FIRST PRESIDENT TO BE VOTED OUT OF OFFICE

President Goodluck Jonathan has lost the 2015 presidential elections to leading opposition candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. He therefore becomes Nigeria’s first sitting president to be voted out of office.

The elections, which took place over the weekend, was Nigeria’s most keenly contested since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. He is also the first president elected president to serve a single tenure in office.

President Jonathan has been in office for six years, having acted for two years in place of deposed President Umaru Musa Yar’ auda.  His tenure had been marred with issues of corruption, the most prominent being the alleged $20 billion unremmitted revenue by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) into the country’s coffers. He also failed to act quickly to curtail the Boko Haram menace that plagued the North East during a greater part of his administration, grounding economic activities in the states of Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe.

He however made some significant strides on the economic front. Under his administration, the country’s GDP was rebased to $510 billion, displacing South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy. South Africa holds Africa’s most developed economy. His agricultural strategy has also been lauded globally, as Nigeria is on its way to becoming self sufficient in rice, cassava and a number of agri-commodities. He also supervised the privatization process of the power industry, which was labelled one of the most transparent privatization procedures in the world. But most of these haven’t necessarily improved the life of the average Nigerian.

The poverty rate is still well over 33 percent, with more than 35 million people still living below the poverty line. Unemployment remains a major challenge, while government is struggling to meet up its with the payment of its wage bills as oil revenues have fallen more than 50 percent. Commodity traders are also feeling the heat from the naira crash.

The incoming president, General Muhammadu Buhari, is thought of as a disciplinarian. His short-lived reign as a military head-of-state, after overthrowing the democratic government of Shehu Shagari, was smeared by issues relating to media stifling and excessive use of fear to drive socio-economic policies.