Garba Shehu: Buhari may have taken wrong decisions — but you can’t question his intentions

Garba Shehu, former presidential spokesperson, says even though former President Muhammadu Buhari may have taken a number of wrong decisions in office, no one can question his [good] intentions while taking them.

In a post on X titled ‘100 days After Buhari’, Shehu said there was no single sector in the country that the former president did not touch.

The former presidential aide said in eight years, the Buhari administration took hundreds of “major” decisions compared to previous governments who took four to five decisions in four years and “rushed to the public square to celebrate themselves”.

ONE HUNDRED DAYS AFTER BUHARI.

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This week, President Muhammadu Buhari clocked 100 days away from office after completing two terms of four years each as President of Nigeria.
He chose to stay in Daura to be far away from Abuja in order not to distract the new APC administration…

— Garba Shehu (@GarShehu) September 14, 2023

“In the eight years he led the country, Muhammadu Buhari had taken many decisions and as is human, one or two may have been wrong,” he said.

“But no one, not even critics, can question his intentions when those decisions were taken.

“Looking at the records he left, the Buhari government has taken hundreds of major decisions in the eight years it was in office, and yet you hear nothing but criticism upon criticism.”

Shehu said Buhari had hoped that the removal of subsidy on petrol would deter people from paying him visits in his Daura country home.

He added that 100 days after Buhari left office however, the visits have not abated, with the former president’s handlers left with no other option but to draw up “a weekly program” as was done for him “while he was in the Villa”.

“The other day, he was musing the decision to remove fuel subsidy by the Tinubu administration, saying he had hoped that it would lessen the pressure on him by constraining the large number of people who pick up their transport and head to Daura to see him from all parts of the country,” he said.

“But that he had noted that instead of they coming one by one, his friends, including the poor and the marginalized now group themselves, share costs to hire buses to come to see and talk to him.

“So while it is the case that some in the country were happy that he was no longer in office, there are some, even more that continue to cherish and admire him.”

The former aide added that he “thinks” history would be fair to Buhari.