Former presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, stated that Nigerians had high expectations of Muhammadu Buhari during his eight-year presidency.
Shehu made this statement at an event organized by Daily Trust in Abuja on Thursday.
He acknowledged that some of the challenges faced by Buhari were due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, which impacted grain imports.
Shehu advised Nigerians to have realistic expectations when choosing their leaders, emphasizing that no leader can single-handedly solve all the problems of the nation.
He said: “His [Buhari’s] government banned the importation of rice because we were growing as much as we needed for the country. In fact, Nigeria fed West Africa. You need to be in any of the border states, either Kano, Katsina or Jigawa to see how food, even as of today, is being moved massively out of the country. We are feeding West Africa.
“There were many challenges during the time he was in power. I don’t need to mention them. You all know about this. Was it COVID or the war in Ukraine? You know all of these things. In a nutshell, this is to say that he was a victim of a crisis of expectation.
“And I think that is the lesson for Nigerians with what I have seen with Buhari’s critics. And this for Tinubu and any other president that will come thereafter is that Nigerians should begin to lower their expectations, especially where those expectations are simply inhumane. Leaders can do a lot of things. But no one leader can do everything for one given nation.”
On the construction of the Second Niger Bridge, Shehu said: “Before Buhari, it used to take Christians in the East or South West two to three days to go home for Christmas because the traffic clumped on the Niger Bridge.”
