Opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari will use Nigeria’s windfall oil savings to revive industry and create jobs if elected president next month, he told Reuters.
Africa’s most populous nation goes to the polls on April 21 in a vote expected to lead to the first transition from one elected leader to another. A recent U.S. government poll showed the former military ruler was favourite to win.
“When I go around, I see hundreds of thousands of young men below 40, most of them unemployed. I feel we are really in trouble. I think we really have to do something about that,” Buhari said in an interview in a Lagos hotel on Saturday.
Africa’s top oil producer has amassed unprecedented foreign reserves of more than $40 billion thanks to record oil income and tight spending controls that have been the hallmark of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s IMF-backed economic reforms.
Buhari said crime and civil unrest have grown because Obasanjo had allowed the manufacturing sector, including textiles and oil refining, to die.
“There is no need building billions outside and nobody can work because everyone is scurrying home to lock up because of burglars. I think they should be used to make the country more productive in agriculture and manufacturing,” Buhari said.
“When people are prosperous, they mind their own business, but when people are uneducated and are poor, they become very susceptible to manipulation by ethnic or religious intolerance,” Buhari said.
More than 15,000 people have died in religious, ethnic and communal violence since democracy returned with Obasanjo’s election in 1999. Unrest in the oil-producing Niger Delta has cut exports and forced thousands of foreign workers to flee.
Buhari, the candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party, is the leading opponent to Umaru Yar’Adua, a state governor, who is the flagbearer of the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
CORRUPTION
Buhari’s popularity is based on his no-nonsense approach to crime and corruption. During his 20-month stint as army head of state from 1983 to 1985, he repossessed looted state assets, waged a “war on indiscipline” and executed drug traffickers.
Obasanjo has also fought a high-profile war on graft, but critics accuse him of using it as a weapon against political opponents and allowing his allies to go undisturbed.
Independent watchdog Transparency International ranks Nigeria as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, and law enforcement officials say almost half of its $40 billion oil revenue is stolen or wasted.
“Other than security, our next fight will be corruption because unless people can come and do some clean business in Nigeria, the question of inviting investors will be difficult,” Buhari said.
Buhari lost against Obasanjo in 2003, and spent two years in court arguing that the results were rigged. The Supreme Court ruled in Obasanjo’s favour in 2005.
This time, Buhari said he had developed a system to prevent malpractice at the polls.
“People will conscientiously guard their votes through polling booth, to collation centre and to Abuja. We have advised all our supporters to develop a system of relay,” he said.
Buhari said clean elections and reducing corruption were the keys to solving unrest in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where militants have launched attacks on facilities and kidnapped foreign workers in a bid for more autonomy.
“If the government is able to earn their confidence to allow them to drop their guns and participate in the elections, then they will elect those they want to represent them and give them the benefit of the doubt,” Buhari said.
Calls for “resource control” would disappear if Nigerians understood how much money the delta already receives, he added. The four biggest oil producing states in southern Nigeria receive more than all 19 northern states put together, but Buhari said the money was mismanaged by the government.