100 days after handing over: Buhari now goes to farm four days a week, his crops and animals doing well – Garba Shehu

The former President also backed the decision of the current administration to remove fuel subsidies, saying he had hoped that it would reduce the large number of people coming to see him in Daura.

Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, disclosed this in a statement issued on Thursday to mark Buhari’s 100 days out of office.

Shehu said that Buhari chose to stay in Daura to be far away from Abuja in order not to distract the new APC administration, to have a good rest and to care for his farm, which had not received as much attention as it needed while he was away.

“He goes to the farm four days of the week and is upbeat about how well the crops and his animals are now doing. He gets a good measure of rest but the visits have not abated. To manage the numbers, he has a weekly programme drawn for him, as they did while he was in the Villa,” Shehu stated.

“Visitors are scheduled on the programme, but there are so many people who just start their motorbikes and cars to head out to Daura in the belief that he has the time to receive all visitors.

“The other day, he was musing about 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, but that he had noted that instead of they coming one by one, his friends, including the poor and the marginalised, now group themselves, share costs to hire buses to come to see and talk to him.”

Shehu claimed that in the eight years that Buhari was president, he had made a number of decisions, and as is human, one or two may have been wrong, but no one, and that “not even critics can question his intentions when those decisions were taken.”

According to Shehu, there has not been a single area that has not been touched by the former president’s government, with changes in the eight years he was in office.

“In the normative functions of our governments, an administration takes four to five major decisions in four years and they rush to the public square to celebrate themselves. 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,” he added.

He also noted that, throughout these eight years, no bribery allegations against Buhari were ever made and one of the greatest achievements of the Buhari government has been that it has diversified the economy.

Shehu stated that the administration achieved self-sufficiency in rice and financed millions of small farmers of 23 different commodities, an effort that helped boost the export of agricultural commodities.

He added that the COVID-19 pandemic was brought under control due to the relentless leadership of President Buhari, noting that the country was among the few that came out with strong economic activity after the pandemic.