Nigeria's president-elect Muhammadu Buhari says he will fight corruption

By Christian Purefoy and Holly Yan, CNN

Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)A day after winning Nigeria's presidency, Muhammadu Buhari told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that he plans to aggressively fight corruption that has long plagued Nigeria and go after the root of the nation's unrest.

Buhari said he'll "rapidly give attention" to curbing violence in the northeast part of Nigeria, where the terrorist group Boko Haram operates.

By cooperating with neighboring nations Chad, Cameroon and Niger, he said his administration is confident it will be able to thwart criminals and others contributing to Nigeria's instability.

For the first time in Nigeria's history, the opposition defeated the ruling party in democratic elections.

Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by about 2 million votes, according to Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission.

The win comes after a long history of military rule, coups and botched attempts at democracy in Africa's most populous nation.

APC Party: Nigerian Pres. Jonathan has conceded 03:20

In an exclusive live interview from Abuja, Buhari told Amanpour he was not concerned about reconciling the nation after a divisive campaign.

He said now that he has been elected he will turn his focus to Boko Haram and "plug holes" in the "corruption infrastructure" in the country.

"A new day and a new Nigeria are upon us," Buhari said after his win Tuesday. "The victory is yours, and the glory is that of our nation."

Earlier, Jonathan phoned Buhari to concede defeat. The outgoing president also offered a written statement to his nation.

"I thank all Nigerians once again for the great opportunity I was given to lead this country, and assure you that I will continue to do my best at the helm of national affairs until the end of my tenure," Jonathan said.

"I promised the country free and fair elections. I have kept my word."

Buhari, 72, will be sworn in on May 29. He will take the helm at a critical time, as Nigeria grapples with Boko Haram, serious economic woes and corruption.

A leader again

This isn't Buhari's first time leading Nigeria, but it's his first time in nearly 30 years.

Who is Nigerian President-elect Muhammadu Buhari? 01:33

A military coup brought Buhari to power in late 1983, closing a brief period of popular rule by Shehu Shagari. But Buhari himself was ousted by another military coup in August 1985.

His presidential win is the result of his fourth attempt to lead the country since he was ousted 30 years ago.

Buhari is a Sunni Muslim from Nigeria's poorer North, while Jonathan comes from a Christian and animist South that is rich with oil.

What's at Stake for New Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari?

By Jon Schuppe

'Change Has Come,' Nigeria's Next President Declares

NBC News

A month before Nigeria's national elections, retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari traveled to London for a speech in which he described his vision for the troubled republic, torn by a war with Boko Haram terrorists and sapped by plunging oil prices.

Buhari, the 72-year-old head of the opposition All Progressives Congress who briefly led the country following a 1983 military coup, promised to "choke" Boko Haram, implement economic reforms and root out waste and corruption.

"Let me assure you that if I am elected president, the world will have no cause to worry about Nigeria as it has had to recently; that Nigeria will return to its stabilizing role in West Africa," he told an audience at Chatham House, an international policy institute.

Ben Curtis / AP

Supporters of Muhammadu Buhari celebrate in Kano, Nigeria, on Tuesday.

Now, with this week's resounding win over Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari has to prove he can deliver.

He is taking over Africa's largest economy and one of its most turbulent democracies, a country that has never before handed power to an opposition party without force. Nigeria sees itself as the one country to lead Africa into the future.

"With 183 million people — more than Russian Federation — what happens in Nigeria has an impact on the entire African continent," said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria.

The largely peaceful election alone is enough to raise Nigeria's prestige and influence, Campbell said.

But the country has profound problems.

Boko Haram's Islamist militants have killed thousands in the country's north in an attempt to create a regional caliphate. A February offensive drove the group back, but it remains a potent threat.

Who Are Nigeria's Boko Haram?

 

NBCNews.com

A steep decline in global oil prices has devastated Nigeria's economy, which derives about 70 percent of its revenue from oil. About a third of Nigerians live in poverty, Buhari has pointed out.

The country is split among ethnic, religious and regional lines, divisions that Buhari will have to transcend. Buhari is a northern Muslim; his predecessor, Jonathan, represented southern Christians.

Because he is Muslim, Buhari has had to defend himself against accusations he'd impose hard line Islamic law — and analysts say the allegations are not realistic.

Historically, power and oil revenues have been divvied up by Nigerian elites. That has led to extraordinary corruption, which Buhari has promised to eliminate.

Campbell said there are reasons to believe Buhari can be highly effective. That impression is rooted in his relatively modest lifestyle, notable in a country where former government "big men" leaders live lavishly. Campbell said that when he was ambassador from 2004 to 2007, he visited Buhari at his home, where he answered the door himself and didn't appear to have any servants.

"He's probably the only Nigerian politician or political figure who is genuinely popular on the street in the north," said Campbell, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

NBC News

This will be Buhari's second crack at leading Nigeria. The first one ended disastrously.

He seized power in a 1983 military coup d'etat. While in office, he engineered a legendary crackdown on government corruption, but was also criticized for trampling civil rights. After 18 months, he was ousted in another coup.

Since then, Buhari — whose human-rights record has been fiercely criticized — has described himself as a convert to democracy. He ran for president three times before before this week's victory.

The United States has had chilly relations with Nigeria, mostly due what has been seen as an ineffectual response to Boko Haram, which kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls last April. Buhari's election was endorsed by the United States Tuesday.

A U.S. official saying the new president was in a position to build a "new" Nigeria that could lead Africa into a new era of modernization and peaceful democratic change.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

First published April 1st 2015, 2:19 am 
Jon Schuppe is a writer on the enterprise unit at NBC News. He arrived in April 2014, after two years...

In Nigeria, 'Buharism' will need to modernize fast

NALYSISABUJA | By Ed Cropley

Reuters.

Supporters of the presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressive Congress (APC) party celebrate in Kano March 31, 2015.

Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

(Reuters) - As Muhammadu Buhari sat in front of the TV watching his election victory unfold, Nigeria's future president took care to be photographed beside a Muslim elder and a bishop, a choreographed statement of unity in a religiously mixed nation.
More importantly for investors, over the left shoulder of the purple-robed bishop was a smiling figure in a sharp grey suit: Aliko Dangote, Nigeria's most celebrated business magnate and Africa's richest man.
An ascetic former military ruler, Buhari built his stunning electoral landslide on promises to clean up Nigeria's notoriously filthy politics and get tough on the Boko Haram insurgency raging in the northeast.
He returned to those themes in his first official speech as president elect, stressing a zero tolerance approach to corruption and saying he would "spare no effort" to defeat the Islamist militants who have killed thousands in the northeast.
It is less clear what his victory means for Africa's biggest economy, under pressure from the collapse in the oil price, but Dangote's grinning, capitalist presence in the sandal-wearing general's inner circle at his moment of triumph looks reassuring.
In the most glaring endorsement of Buhari - as well as relief that the elections avoided the violence of previous polls - the stock market leapt more than 8 percent in the immediate aftermath of his win.
Bonds also climbed, while the naira, which has lost 20 percent of its purchasing power in two devaluations since November, gained 0.5 percent on the black market to 217 to the dollar. It remained fixed at 197 in official interbank trade.
'NEW BUHARISM'?
This is not to say all is set fair for the 72-year-old, whose last time in office was 20 months as a military dictator in the mid-1980s.
Then, his response to a yawning trade gap and runaway inflation was to fix prices and ban "unnecessary" imports, rather than let the currency depreciate, under a disastrous economic program dubbed 'Buharism'.
For good measure, he also cut ties with the International Monetary Fund and ordered his soldiers to whip people who failed to form orderly queues at the bus stop.
Buhari's political views have mellowed since then, and his relationship with Dangote, whose business empire stretches from cement to pasta, suggests his economic ones have gone the same way.
But he faces many dark clouds on the horizon.
From President Goodluck Jonathan, who stunned Nigeria's 170 million people with a gracious concession speech, Buhari inherits an economy decelerating sharply from the 7 percent annual growth to which it has become accustomed.
Standard and Poor's cut Nigeria's credit rating two weeks before the vote and Fitch lowered its outlook on the eve of the polls - both moves that will increase Abuja's borrowing costs.
Meanwhile, the oil price languishes at around $55 a barrel, half its level of a year ago and a massive blow to a country that relies on crude sales for 80 percent of government revenues and 95 percent of foreign exchange.
Outside the capital, huge road-building projects lie deserted and half-finished and cranes stand idle across its skyline, testament to a construction sector pole-axed by the government's difficulty in paying its bills.
Foreign reserves have dropped by a third in the last year to below $30 billion.
Against such a backdrop, Buhari - now free of the need to get elected - will have few options but to cut Nigeria's cloth to a more appropriate size, analysts say.
"Nigeria has been postponing a really important macro-economic adjustment because of the sensitivity of voters," said Jan Dehn, head of research at Ashmore Group, an emerging markets investment manager. "That's really critical for investors."
'LEAST AWFUL'
In practical terms, that means cutting government spending, hammering the corruption that overshadows every facet of life, and letting the naira find a more stable - and lower - footing to stem the bleeding of central bank dollar reserves.
"The currency still needs to adjust to take into consideration lower oil prices," said Claudia Calich, an emerging bond fund manager at M&G Investments in London. "The earlier they do this, the better."
Others said Buhari could be forced to take the unpopular move of hiking taxes to plug the gap left by oil receipts.
"We expect a reformist administration that will impose austere policies," said Yvonne Mhango, an economist at Renaissance Capital in Johannesburg. "Limited fiscal resources imply upside risk to taxes."
Meanwhile, Nigerians who have for the first time realized the power of an unfettered ballot box will be breathing down his neck demanding results - especially since voting was in many cases anti-Jonathan rather than explicitly pro-Buhari.
In a scathing Economist editorial that will not have been lost on many Nigerians, the magazine grudgingly endorsed Buhari as merely the 'least awful' of the two choices put before them.
"It's not so much that people love Buhari. But they were tired of this stagnation, this lack of movement, this seeming cluelessness of administration," said political analyst Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa.
"It's not so much 'Hosannah, Hosannah'. People will be crying 'Crucify him' if he's unable to perform."
(Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon and Sujata Rao; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

 

 

 

Nigeria Election: Buhari receives Certificate of Return from INEC

...appreciates President Jonathan and to Nigerians, "it is you... who have won".





Posted by Ambassador T. Brikins

General, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president-elect, was a Certificate of Return by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega, handed the certificate to Mr. Buhari, and the vice president-elect, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, on Wednesday.
Mr. Buhari defeated President Goodluck Jonathan in the presidential election that took place Saturday , March 28, 2015..
 “Change has finally come  to Nigeria...the long night has passed",General Buhari said, shortly after receiving the certificate.
.
Muhammadu Buhari, who dedicated his victory  to Nigerians, said  they are the ultimate victors.
He emphasised that “In a more profound way, it is you, Nigerians that have won. The people have shown their love for our nation and their belief in democracy”.
Buhari said Nigerians have made history, and that it was the resolve of Nigerians that made the change they were yearning for possible.
“The good people of Nigeria, answered the call of history. When the account of this fine moment is written, it will be said that it was the people themselves who led this nation to democracy,” he said.
“You stood in line patiently for hours in the sun, rain and then in the dark to cast your ballots. Even when the vote was extended to Sunday in some places, you still performed your civic duty. You did so peacefully. You voted with your heart. Your vote affirms that you believe Nigeria’s future can be better than what it is today.
“You voted for change and now change has come,” he said.

Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan calls Buhari to concede defeat in election

Wednesday 01 April 2015 00.00

People react as results of the election show opposition challenger Muhammadu Buhari ahead

Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan has publicly conceded defeat in the presidential election to Muhammadu Buhari, expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to lead the nation.
"I thank all Nigerians once again for the great opportunity I was given to lead this country and assure you that I will continue to do my best at the helm of national affairs until the end of my tenure," he said in a statement.
"I have conveyed my personal best wishes to General Muhammadu Buhari."
Jonathan also urged his supporters to follow "due process" in channelling their frustrations at losing the election, trying to pour cold water on any potential post-vote violence.
             
"Nobody's ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian," he said in a statement issued after his election defeat.
"The unity, stability and progress of our dear country is more important than anything else."
Jonathan also said he had held true to his pledge of free and fair elections.
"I promised the country free and fair elections. I have kept my word," the 57-year-old said in a statement after the final results were announced with Buhari some 2.5 million votes ahead.
Jonathan urged disputes over the results to be settled in court, adding: "Nobody's ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian. The unity, stability and progress of our dear country is more important than anything else."
Earlier, Mr Buhari said that he was "very confident" of an election win, as the final results of a tense political campaign came in.
Asked if he was confident of having won after his All Progressive Congress (APC) claimed victory, he said: "I am very confident, thank you very much."
Lai Mohammed, a spokesperson for the APC party said: "This is the first time in Nigeria that a sitting government will be voted out of power using purely democratic means"
"The people of Nigeria have taken over."
Mr Buhari, a former army general, ruled between 1983 and 1985 after seizing power in a coup.
Ousted in another military takeover in August 1985, he declared himself a convert to democracy and has since run and lost in several previous elections.
Mr Jonathan's five years at the helm of Africa's most populous country and biggest economy have been plagued by corruption scandals and a Boko Haram Islamist insurgency.
His People's Democratic Party (PDP) has run Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999.

Source: AFP/Reuters

Orubebe apologizes for his behaviour at collation centre yesterday, says he regrets it

Former Niger Delta Affairs Minister Elder Godsday Orubebe has apologised for his behaviour at the collation centre in Abuja yesterday morning. Speaking with reporters last night, the PDP party agent, who held up proceedings and used abusive words on Jega, said he regretted his action and asked Nigerian to forgive his behaviour.

”Election is a passionate thing and I really regret what took place this morning. I was unnecessarily pushed by Jega to get to that level. I want to apologise particularly to young Nigerians that look up to take politics as a career to say that what happened was
not intended to cause them any embarrassment. 

To Nigerians generally, I regret my actions as even an elder in the church, and a leader, the young men expected to see a lot from me and I believe that if there was any disappointment they got from me I apologize to Nigerians and to the youths of this country.”

On President Jonathan conceding defeat, Orubebe said:

“Two things are in place. The president is the president of everybody. As a statesman and as a president; he has done what he should do.”

On whether the PDP will challenge the result, he said:

“I cannot decide for the PDP. It  is a large family. We were sent on an errand to come back to report. We will go and report to the party and the party will take the necessary action it has to take. 

You remember what happened in Ekiti’s  governorship election when the governor congratulated his opponent and the party went back and said this is what they have seen. The candidate is not the party, he is a candidate and he has acted very well as a statesman, and as the president, the father of all. For us, we are agents to be here to see what transpired here and give report to them.”

Nigeria election: Muhammadu Buhari hails 'vote for change'

 

Gen Buhari beat Mr Jonathan by 15.4 million votes to 13.3 million 

The winner of Nigeria's presidential poll, Muhammadu Buhari, has hailed his victory as a vote for change and proof the nation has embraced democracy.

Mr Buhari also praised outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan as a "worthy opponent" who peacefully relinquished power.
Gen Buhari beat Mr Jonathan by 15.4 million votes to 13.3 million.
Observers have generally praised the election, though there have been allegations of fraud.

Mr Buhari, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, has become the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election in Nigeria.
The former military ruler said: "President Jonathan was a worthy opponent and I extend the hand of fellowship to him.
"We have proven to the world that we are people who have embraced democracy. We have put the one-party state behind us."