Buhari ‘scared’ by weight of public expectations

Muhammadu Buhari, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in next month’s presidential election, says he is “a little scared” that his supporters have such high expectations of him that they expect him to perform miracles should he become president of the country on May 29.

Buhari made the comment on Thursday while answering questions at the end of his presentation on  ‘Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Africa: Nigeria’s Transition’ at the Chatam House, United Kingdom.

A member of the audience had asked to know how Buhari felt, seeing that “a lot of people in Nigeria angling for change had picked him” as the man to turn the country around.

The retired general first found a humorous angle to the question, saying he had “not yet been picked” by the people, before going on to express his fears.

“The question on high expectation within the first 100 days, those who have been following the train of our campaign will see how people have been turning out,” he said.

“Some even become emotional, crying; and we are a little scared because once I assume office, they would start expecting miracle within the few weeks or months and it would be very dicey handling such situation. But we would devise a deliberate campaign to tamper high expectation in a reasonable way.

“Nigerians know that we are in trouble and when we get there, we would quickly get correct intelligence to know what is on ground and we would inform Nigerians and also make sure that the misappropriation and misapplication of available resources would not be allowed and you would be surprised how much savings we would realise and that savings would be ploughed back into development. This is what I can promise, but I would remove that 100 days impression that some politicians are creating.”