Buhari’s 100 Days: Presidency And The Opposition Antics by George Agba

by George Agba

Despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s resolve to maintain a low profile in marking his 100 days in office, the opposition is adamant on engaging the presidency in a war of attrition, GEORGE AGBA reports.

President Muhammadau Buhari clocked 100 days in office at the weekend. Save for the media and and public commentators who made far-reaching attempts to gauge the success and activism of his presidency, there was nothing more spectacular from the presidency that the 100-day standard was being marked. Saturday which was actually the D-day was the most oppressively sombre among the days of the week at the presidential villa.

Last Thursday, the president embarked on a private visit to Kaduna from where he proceeded to Daura, his home town in Katsina State. He left those who may have nursed plans to invade his privacy in Aso Rock and turn the place into a sphere of activities stranded. LEADERSHIP gathered that
some event planners who approached the presidency with strings of proposals for programme of activities to mark the president’s 100 days in office met bad market. They were told that there was no provision for such frivolities.

Media houses too probably had a dose of the frustration. Paid radio, television and newspaper adverts, as well as talk shows and jingles to outline the president’s achievements were conspicuously missing. This was unlike what entailed in past administrations when government agencies, corporate bodies and some individuals spent huge sums of money to showcase bloated and incredible presidential achievements.

Those beaming their torchlights in search of what President Buhari is doing differently from past governments that had been certified as colossal failures may as well find answers in the way and manner Aso Rock observed the 100 days in office. It was destitute of the usual fanfare, pump and pageantry that characterized previous ones. The reason for this is not far fetched. Even before he was elected, Buhari had expressed a strong disinclination to the 100-day concept.

His response to the question posed to him in Chatham House in respect to what he would achieve in 100 days was instructive. He said he will remove the idea of 100 days because it was fraudulent. Buhari said, “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 appropriation and application 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’”.

The point Buhari was trying to put across is that the 100-day standard is not a perfect measure for achievements. The opposition could take advantage of the short space of time and play on the sensibility of citizens to their own advantage. While there is nothing magic about the number, they could coerce the people to believing that the government of the day did not achieve anything as a result of its ineptitude.

The presidency quickly identified this in the antics of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to discredit the Buhari administration last week. The party started by reproducing what it tagged the many promises that were made during the APC campaign in the online media. There were sponsored online reports about a document titled, “My Covenant with Nigerians”, which was purportedly signed by Buhari and posted on the APC’s website in March. Another list of promises titled, ‘One hundred things Buhari will do in 100 days’ also flooded the social media.

But the presidency set the pace for the debate early enough. The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu distanced Buhari from the documents. He said, “The president never promised anything to anyone. It is on record in that lecture at Chatham House. They alluded it through some documents that were flying around committing him to this thing or that thing within 100 days”.

“My point as the director, media and communications of that campaign is that I was responsible for internal and external communications and this so called documents that are been flown around didn’t have my signature.

“I didn’t fund them and I didn’t authorize them. From what President Buhari himself had said at Chatham House, he had no iota of knowledge of those documents. So, people cannot hold him to account on something to which he did not commit himself”.

The presidential media team spent most of the time last week tackling the opposition. The PDP did not give the presidency any breeding space at all. From allegations that Nigeria’s economy had become worse under Buhari, the party alleged that corruption was ongoing under the present administration. The party’s spokesman, Chief Olisa Metuh, in a statement asked the APC government to wage a credible holistic anti-corruption war by first purging itself of unclean association.

Metuh said despite the “holier than thou” posture of the present government, the PDP had “incontrovertible evidence that grave corrupt practices are ongoing and allowed to fester by associates and cronies of government. He listed these associates to include former and present governors of the All Progressives Congress and those who it said financed the Presidential campaign of the APC with “stolen state funds.”

But the presidency fired back at the opposition party, asking it to stop distracting the President with what it described as frivolous and unfounded allegations. Presidential spokesman, Shehu challenged Metuh to produce “any evidence or instance when President Buhari interfered in the activities of the EFCC by telling them who to prosecute and who to shield from prosecution”.
Ref: http://leadership.ng/news/459329/buharis-100-days-presidency-and-the-opposition-antics