The United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan died aged 73 on Friday, state media said, after battling illness for several years.

“The Ministry of Presidential Affairs condoles the people of the UAE and the Islamic world… on the passing of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on Friday, May 13,” the official WAM news agency said.

The ministry announced 40 days of mourning with flags at half-mast from Friday, with work suspended in the public and private sector for the first three days.

Sheikh Khalifa took over as the UAE’s second president in November 2004, succeeding his father as the 16th ruler of Abu Dhabi, the federation’s richest emirate.

He has rarely been seen in public since 2014, when he had surgery following a stroke, although he has continued to issue rulings.

His brother, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, has been seen as the UAE’s de facto ruler in recent years.

Hanke’s Annual Misery Index has rated Nigeria as the 11th most miserable country in 2021.

According to the report, which analyzed 156 countries by calculating their unemployment rates, inflation, prevailing lending rates, and GDP growths, Nigeria went from 15th among the most miserable countries in the world in 2020 to 11th in 2021.

The figures, published on the verified Twitter handle of Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at John Hopkins University, showed that Nigeria was the fourth most miserable country in Africa last year, only behind Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Angola.

According to the report, the five least miserable countries were Brunei, Switzerland, China, Taiwan, and Japan. The United States ranked 95th, making it the 14th least miserable nation of the 108 countries on the table.

The latest report by the economic expert once again underlines the instability of Nigeria’s economy in the last seven years, captured by two recessions between 2016 and 2019.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the consumer price index (CPI), which measures inflation, increased to 15.92 percent year on year in March 2022. Figures by the NBS also pegged Nigeria’s unemployment rate at an all-time high of 33.3 percent.

The latest figures bring Nigeria’s misery index points to 49.22, a significant uptick from the 41.12 index points recorded at the start of Buhari’s term.

In a recent report titled, “Africa Faces New Shock as War Raises Food and Fuel Costs,” the International Monetary Fund, in its Regional Economic Outlook, said that it expected Nigeria’s economic growth to slow to 3.8 percent this year from last year’s 4.5 percent.

The report said the effects of Russia’s invasion on Ukraine would be deeply consequential, eroding standards of living and aggravating macroeconomic imbalances.

“We now expect growth to slow to 3.8 percent this year from last year’s better-than-expected 4.5 percent, according to our latest Regional Economic Outlook. Though we project annual growth to average four percent over the medium term, it will be too slow to make up for ground lost to the pandemic.”

Inflation in the region is expected to remain elevated in 2022 and 2023 at 12.2 percent and 9.6 percent respectively, the first time since 2008 that regional average inflation will reach such high levels, the report said.