From IBT

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari received mixed reviews on his performance from analysts of his first 100 days in office. The 72-year-old will celebrate the milestone Saturday, after his presidential inauguration on May 29 marked the first democratic transfer of power in Nigeria’s history. Buhari has taken steps to crackdown on the West African nation’s corrupt bureaucracy and Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency. But the Nigerian leader has not yet appointed a cabinet or detailed a plan to tackle the country’s struggling economy, experts and analysts said.

“This has been viewed in a disappointing light, as the president was expected to be a more decisive leader than his predecessor,” Ronak Gopaldas, a sovereign risk analyst at South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank, told AFP news agency Thursday. “As a president who campaigned on a message of change, especially security and corruption, the big elephant in the room remains the economy, and clarity in this regard is sorely lacking.”

Nigeria’s currency plunged against the dollar this week as the parallel market exchange rate rocketed amid an increased demand for U.S. currency in the country. Nigeria’s commodity-linked naira has turned volatile due to China’s economic slowdown, which has sent the prices of raw materials such as copper and oil into a freefall. The naira has fallen around 15 percent over the last year, which has fueled inflation despite the central bank spending billions to bolster the Nigerian currency.

Following a global sell-off and a record trading day in China, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics said the West African country’s annual economic growth in the second quarter plummeted at the end of August to 2.35 percent from 6.54 percent a year earlier, Reuters reported. Nigeria’s oil dependency has put the country’s economy at risk in the wake of a global oil glut and the prospect of a slowing economy in China, the world’s second largest crude consumer.

Nigeria’s federal revenues are also down by about 30 percent. Oil and gas exports account for more than 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings and about 70 percent of government revenues. Nigeria is gradually diversifying its oil-dependent economy and becoming more services-oriented through retail and wholesale trade, real estate, information and communication. But oil remains its primary source of income and Buhari has yet to unmask a clear vision for economic policies.

Read more at IBT