The opposing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will defeat the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 presidential election, according to a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
THIS DAY quoted EIU, the research unit of The Economist Magazine, as predicting this in its latest country forecast overview on Nigeria.
According to the report, though it would be a close contest, APC’s defeat will be fostered by chaos within the party.
“The 2019 elections will be a close contest between the ruling APC and the PDP,” the report read.
“Intra-party politics would be chaotic ahead of the poll and we ultimately expect the incumbent to lose power.”
The report said while there would be a change in the custodian of power, “instability will remain an insoluble challenge”.
It predicted that issues of insecurity, political instability will persist in the country.
It added that inflation will remain high while the naira would further depreciate but regain stability in 2022.
“We expect the PDP presidential candidate to win, but for the next administration to flounder against the same problems as the incumbent one,” it read.
“The next government is likely to be led by the PDP, the main opposition, potentially in a coalition with smaller parties, but instability will remain an insoluble challenge.
“A weak APC before the election and a troubled government thereafter implies that Nigeria’s manifold security threats will continue to fester.
“Our central forecast is, however, that the 2019 elections will be completed without a widespread breakdown in stability with Nigeria’s democracy proving once again to be robust enough to endure.
“However, we expect major unrest to continue in 2020-2022 as comprehensive solutions prove too complex and costly to implement in the medium term.
“The Central Bank of Nigeria will not act completely independently, and the overall policy agenda will be pulled in differing directions by various powerful interest groups.
“Fiscal expenditure will remain dominant by recurrent spending despite attempts to boost capital investments. Efforts to boost non-oil tax revenue will be constraint by weak bureaucratic capacity and low economic growth.
“Constrained by a crippling infrastructure deficit, economic growth will be well beneath level needed to boost job creation and increasing living standard.
“Inflation will generally remain high over the forecast period (2018-2022) amid expansionary fiscal policy and high food prices stemming from government efforts to limit import and support local producers.
“The authorities will continue to interfere in the foreign exchange market although the degree of interference should eventually lessen with higher oil prices supporting reserves and broad economic confidence slowly improving.
“The naira will nonetheless depreciate over 2019-21 and be broadly stable in 2022.”
The Economist had predicted President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in 2015.