Bloomberg quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on the candidates in the Nigerian election this weekend and their prospects for victory:
Unlike many Nigerian politicians, Buhari doesn’t wear a fancy watch and doesn’t live in a lavish gated home, which has allowed him to present himself as the kind of reformer he used to imprison. Last month he told Chatham House that democracy must deliver more than a choice at the ballot box, and should extend to guaranteeing the rule of law, good governance and shared prosperity.
“I laugh when people associate him with anti-corruption,” J. Peter Pham, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, told me. “I think he benefits enormously from two things. Until very recently the military’s campaign against Boko Haram was incompetent and the median age in Nigeria today is 19. Most Nigerians have no memory of him as a ruler.” Pham said that when Buhari was the federal commissioner for petroleum and natural resources in 1978, $2.8 billion went missing from the state’s oil revenues.