President to address nation following more than three months of absence spent in London for ailment.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to the country on Saturday after more than three months in the UK for medical treatment for an undisclosed “health challenge”.

The 74-year-old left for London on May 7.

His prolonged absence caused tensions back home where calls have grown for him to either return or resign.

“President Buhari is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7am on Monday,” his office said.

In recent weeks, the office has been releasing photos of officials meeting with the rail-thin but smiling president in the hope of reassuring people back home.

His main opponents in the 2015 election that brought him to power claimed he had prostate cancer. He has denied that claim. Buhari’s four-year term ends in 2019.

Challenges facing Nigeria

Nigeria’s ongoing challenges include deadly Boko Haram attacks, a weak economy and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions malnourished in the northeast.

With Buhari away, Nigeria has been led by acting president and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who met the president in London in mid-July and announced that Buhari would return to Nigeria “very shortly”.

Observers fear that political unrest could erupt in Nigeria, particularly in the predominantly Muslim north, should Buhari not finish his term in office. The previous president was a Christian from the south, as is Osinbajo. The health of Nigeria’s Musa Yar’Adua after months of treatment abroad leaders has been a sensitive issue since the 2010 death in office of President Umaru Ardua.

Source: Al Jazeera, 19th August 2017

The German chapter of the Nigerians In Diaspora Organization (NIDO) will hold its annual summit in Hamburg on 30 September-1 October. The event will feature a business conference and an award ceremony. The 4th Nigerian Business & Investment Summit is dedicated to discussions on the necessity for, and opportunities in, the diversification of the Nigerian economy, which is currently experiencing difficulties arising from its over reliance on oil exports.
Prof Brando Okolo of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, who is also the general secretary of NIDO Germany, will speak on the imperative and processes for creating production driven skills in Nigeria while Ambassador John Ejinnaka, Consul-General of Nigeria in Frankfurt, will give a talk on “Diversifying the Nigerian Economy and Attracting Foreign Direct Investment”.

Source: The African Courier

It is time to plan for a highly diversified post-oil economy

When the Muhammadu Buhari Administration comes to power later this month, it will be confronted with a perfect storm of economic conditions. The price of oil is currently just over half of where it was in June 2014.Foreign exchange reserves are falling. The excess crude account has dwindled to the point of being nearly empty. The government debt portfolio, especially the domestic component, is on the rise. It will be a mistake to attribute all these problems to the out-going administration alone. Nigeria’s current economic problems have accumulated over a long period and the change of administration offers an opportunity to reflect and act on Nigeria’s economic ambitions. The current dismal economic trends can be traced to many sources, but one reason stands out above others: Nigeria’s continued high dependence on oil. Although the rebasing of the economy in 2014 has revealed significant growth in the gross domestic product, estimated at US$510 billion, the government still depends on oil for about 65 per cent of its revenue (the 2015 federal government budget is based on the assumption that oil will account for 53 per cent of government revenue) and over 90 per cent of its foreign exchange earnings. The boom in oil prices from 2000-2008 had one insidious effect on economic policy-making, the expectation that Nigeria could power its way to economic greatness through projected trends in oil and gas production and growth in population size. That expectation was particularly fuelled by Goldman Sachs reports which predicted that Nigeria would be among the top 20 economies by 2020 and which included Nigeria in the so-called NEXT 11 countries after the BRICs: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam. More recently, Nigeria was included in a sub-set of the NEXT 11 called MINT, which stands for Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. Continue reading Nigeria’s Economic Ambitions →