The sooner this lame duck president is replaced by a leader who can actually implement reform in Africa’s most populous nation, and in what should be Africa’s largest oil producer, the better.

If you wanted another symbol of his failure as a president, this was it. Buhari tried to blame the commercial banks for the problems. In an economy where cash remains king, the failure to print and distribute enough new notes led to fights breaking out, people unable to access their salaries, and some bank branches simply closing. First the deadline for taking the old notes out of legal circulation was shifted to February 11, and now it has been deferred until April by court decree. The government was finally forced to backtrack on the phase-out.

As crowds gathered at ATMs, queues formed at banks and supermarkets restricted the change given to customers due to the unavailability of the new notes. The old notes were due to be taken out of circulation on January 31, but the government messed up the release of the new ones. The Nigerian central bank said in October last year that the NGN200, NGN500 and NGN1,000 notes would be replaced with new designs that it claimed would feature higher levels of security against forgery. The run up to the election was chaotic, as outgoing and chronically incompetent President Muhammadu Buhari botched the release of new naira bank notes. (Photo: President Muhammadu Buhari’s official Facebook page) Nigeria’s currency crisis caps Buhari’s failing presidency Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari addresses the crowd during a campaign rally held days before the country’s 2023 presidential elections. Let’s hope the streets of Lagos remain calm as the results are announced and that the new president is honest and competent. At the same time, all 109 seats in the Senate of Nigeria will also be up for election, and all 360 seats in the House of Representatives are also up for grabs at the polls. Upstart Peter Obi of the Labour Party battles septuagenarian Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos representing the ruling All Progressives Congress, and Atiku Abubakar, who was previously vice-president from 1999 to 2007 and is now making his sixth run for the presidency at the age of 76.īy the time you read this piece, maybe the results will be known, and maybe the race will go to a run-off vote next month if the leading candidate does not receive a plurality of the votes, and over 25 per cent of the vote in at least 24 of the country’s 36 states. Since last weekend was Nigerian presidential election weekend, that seems an appropriate tune. Nigerian singer-songwriter Rema is currently soaring high in the charts with his smash song Calm Down ( here).

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