The presidency has disowned documents allegedly containing President Muhammadu Buhari’s promises for his first 100 days in government.
This is even as it insists that the President did not made any specific promises he intends to achieve within his first 100 days in office and ‘he never promised anyone anything’.
The Buhari administration which took off on the 29th of May is already counting down to a 100 days in office by the end of the week, with criticisms of not achieving laid down campaign promises.
Disowning the documents making the rounds, allegedly containing the president’s 100 days promises, Senior Special Assistant to the President Garba Shehu said neither he in his capacity as the director, media and communications of the campaign team nor the President signed the document.
” I was responsible for internal and external communications and these so called documents that are been flown around didn’t have my signature. I didn’t fund them and I didn’t authorize them” he said.
Shehu said the document tagged ‘One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days’ and the other, ‘My Covenant With Nigerians’ did not emanate from the authentic channel of the campaign’s media department.
From what President Buhari himself had said at Chatham House, he had no iota or knowledge of those documents. So, people cannot hold him to account on something to which he did not commit himself, he adds.
On the claims that the APC had posted the documents on its website, Shehu explained that the party had many centres of public communication admitting ” there were some among those centres that were more or less on the loose.
Yes, it was possible that things were being done without the knowledge or the usage of the proper channel of communication”.
Shehu who responded to media enquiries on the criticisms trailing the denial by both the presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) that the president made promises for 100 days, said the Presidency would rather talk about milestones instead of achievements.
Whether the milestones represent achievements or not, that is left for the people to decide. Milestones have been reached which is important for the country, he said.
On the President’s allusion to 100 days while speaking at the Chatt House in London, Shehu said the “President never promised anything to anyone”.
“In that lecture- the video is already now viral on the web- he (Buhari) said ‘it contained falsehood and I am not going to be engaged in deceit. I will go in there, I will see what is there and the get the intelligence – the knowledge of things that are going on- and I will fully commit myself to serving Nigeria'”.
He further quoted President as saying: “The second one: high expectations and what to do with the first 100 days. Yes, I respect that question because quietly I was thinking about these high expectations. Those who are following the trail of our campaigns can see how people are turning out, some becoming emotional and crying.
“I am really getting scared that if I get there they will expect miracles within the next week or months. That would be very dicey handling that one. I think we have to have a deliberate campaign to temper high expectations with some reasonableness on the part of those who are expecting miracles to happen.
“Just to go first to the ‘first 100 days’, some of it is fraudulent and I don’t want to participate in any fraud in any form. Nigerians know that we are in trouble as a people and as a country.” When we get there we will quickly get correct intelligence of what is on the ground and inform Nigerians and just learn what I have just read.
“We will make sure that the misappropriation and misapplication of public resources will not be allowed. You would be surprised by how much savings we will realize. That saving will be ploughed back into development and this is what I can promise. But I would remove that ‘100 days’”.
Elizabeth Archibong
