February’s IMF ‘article IV’ consultations – the Fund’s annual economic progress report – on Nigeria resulted in strong criticism from the Nigerian government, central bank, and economic analysts. The IMF had advised Nigeria to raise interest rates and devalue its currency, the naira. After implementing similar advice in the 1980s as part of a Structural Adjustment Programme with the Fund, the country experienced a severe economic crisis. Nigerian newspaper The Punch reports that the chairman of the national Labour Party, Dan Iwuayanwu, said “both the IMF and the World Bank had never been helpful in their advice on how to move the economy of any third world nation forward.”