The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research unit of The Economist Magazine, has predicted that the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the upcoming 2019 presidential election.
EIU stated this in its latest country forecast overview on Nigeria which was made public on Tuesday.
The EIU, which gave an array of reasons for its prediction, said even though it would be a close call, the opposition PDP would win the election.
It predicted slowdown in economic activities in Nigeria as politics takes centre stage.
The London-based magazine, which also anticipated a depreciation of the naira, said further in its assessment that Buhari was fast shedding support from within the APC with governors and lawmakers defecting to the opposition en masse.
“Intra-party politics would be chaotic ahead of the poll and we ultimately expect the incumbent to lose power.
“The 2019 elections will be a close contest between the ruling APC and the PDP. We expect the PDP presidential candidate to win, but for the next administration to flounder against the same problems as the incumbent one.
“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.
“Internally, not all ambitious politicians from the APC who have defected will be rewarded with places in the next government; or if they are, it will mean that pre-existing grandees within the PDP will have been sidelined.
“Whoever ends up feeling cheated will eventually turn on the new administration, as is happening to the APC now. There is also a unifying PDP presidential candidate, with around 16 aspirants competing for the nomination.
“A weak APC before the election and a troubled government thereafter implies that Nigeria’s manifold security threats will continue to fester.
“Parliamentary rifts will remain the main problem, and this applies no matter who is in charge, given competing priorities between representatives from different regions and the absence of a common ideology within parties,” it said.
