Billion-dollar deal with the IMF

A US $1-billion standby credit approved at the weekend by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and current discussions with the World Bank on a $3-billion concessionary loan attest to a turnaround in Nigeria’s relations with the two institutions, which had been strained since the early 1990s. The current rapprochement is being touted as one of the first dividends of democracy reaped by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo since his election last year ended more than a decade and half of military rule that devastated Nigeria’s economy and bequeathed an unprecedented social crisis on its more than 110 million people. [See separate item titled ‘NIGERIA: IRIN Focus on new arrangements with the IMF, World Bank’]