Approval rating for president dips to 39%

Recovery plans by the Nigerian government are not adequate to tackle economic slump and the citizens will have to live with hard times until next year, according to Bloomberg L.P.

The alert came as the newly released governance survey by the NOI Polls for June revealed that the approval rating for President Muhammadu Buhari has dipped to 39 per cent. The survey, which revealed a nine-point decline from the 48 per cent in May, also showed a general decline in the approval rating of the President across five geopolitical zones.

Buhari had the highest rating in the Northwest zone at 61 per cent, followed by the North East at 59 per cent; the Southeast zone had the least approval rating at eight per cent, followed by the South-South at 24 per cent.

Bloomberg LP, a privately-held financial software, data and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, United States of America, in its brief on Africa yesterday agreed with Renaissance Capital’s Yvonne Mhango in saying that “Nigeria’s economy could contract this year and Buhari’s government is seen as having a few plans in place to turn the slump around.”

Mhango had explained that the President’s vision to diversify Nigeria’s oil-based economy — accounting for more than 70 per cent of revenue — has not translated into big investments. She also argued that the required infrastructure to support local manufacturers did not exist.

‘‘That’s the missing link and we haven’t heard enough on how they are going to improve and make the business environment more conducive,” Mhango said on July 12. “There has been little colour on fiscal policies to drive the growth agenda.”

Compared with the unofficial exchange rate of about N350 per dollar just before the naira was allowed to float, the currency peg at 197/199 per dollar had caused fuel shortages for months as businesses struggled to access forex to place orders. Restrictions on use of dollars to import certain categories of goods ranging from steel products to rice, still apply.

Renaissance Capital, in its projection, says the Nigerian economy will shrink by 0.5 per cent in 2016. This is contrary to the one per cent forecast by the London-based Capital Economics.

John Ashbourne, Africa economist at Capital Economics, said: “A lot of what has gone wrong in the economy — notably fuel shortages and oil output disruptions — happened in the second quarter rather than the first quarter. So things are likely to get quite a bit worse before they get better.  This year is going to be terrible for the economy no matter what they do. The goal of policy now is damage limitation rather than sustained growth.”

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, had in May this year said that the economy was likely to fall into recession. His position was confirmed by another negative growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the end of second quarter (June).

Bloomberg Brief yesterday quoted Standard Chartered’s Razia Khan as saying that price growth and the need to support the naira and attract inflows could force policy makers to increase the benchmark interest rate by as much as 400 basis points to 16 per cent this year.

Nigerians, in the survey conducted by NOIPolls, expressed dissatisfaction with the President’s performance in job creation, healthcare, infrastructure and conflict resolution. However, they showed some level of satisfaction with President Buhari’s performance in the area of national security and corruption.

The President received the highest rating in the area of national security (48 per cent) and corruption (45 per cent).

He was rated poorly in the areas of Conflict Resolution (28 per cent), Agriculture and Food Security (21 per cent), Healthcare (20 per cent), Education (18 per cent), Economy (15 per cent), Job Creation (13 per cent), Infrastructure (13 per cent), and Poverty Alleviation (11 per cent).

The President’s high rating in the area of national security was premised on the perceived peace and gradual return of economic and agricultural activities, especially in the North-East zone where insecurity has been a major problem.

But there are high expectations by Nigerians that the growing Fulani herdsmen and farmers conflicts in the North-Central, South-East, North-East and South-West zones, and the lingering bombing of pipelines by militant groups would be given adequate attention.

More findings from the poll revealed that almost four in every 10 adult Nigerians (representing 39 per cent) approved the President’s job performance. On the contrary, 41 per cent of the respondents disapproved of the President’s job performance while 20 per cent were indifferent.

The figures represent the lowest approval rating of Buhari since the NOIPolls started its approval ratings of the President 13 months ago; with the highest recorded in October 2015 at 80 per cent.