Nigeria’s polls outcome raises many questions

Did voters in Africa’s most populous nation remember AfCFTA?

By Akpo Ometan

The just held Presidential and National Assembly polls in Nigeria may have raised more questions than answers, leaving many analysts wondering as to what the incoming administration would be able to achieve in the months and years that follow.

Presently ranked the nation with the highest number of citizens living below the poverty mark in the world, many are agreed that a critical imperative before the eventually annonced winner of the polls would be strong steps in the direction of vigorously reflating the national economy.

Recording a a 2018 GDP growth level of 1.93 percent amidst soaring unemployment, the Nigerian economy is one of the prime laggard economies in the West African sub-region and beyond there, in all of continent today.

Given this scenario and the fact that the nation has continued to snub the growth-promising African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, it is a wonder that not much attention was paid to debating the merits and demerits of the planned treaty as well as the imperative of Nigeria moving on to sign and ratify it in the shortest possible time during this electoral season.

As many are openly remarking on the streets of Lagos, the nation’s most populous city, it is truly a tough day to be Nigerian!