The Presidency on Tuesday denied reports that President Muhammadu Buhari promised to achieve specific things within his first 100 days in office.
It also claimed that the document tagged ‘One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days’ and ‘My Covenant With Nigerians’ did not emanate from the authentic channel of the campaign’s media department.
The Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu made the clarification while responding to the criticisms that followed the denial that the President made such promises.
He urged Nigerians to ignore the claims from certain quarters that the president specifically made promises of achievements within his 100 days in office.
The Presidential aide said that he never authorized or signed any document in this regard in his capacity as the director, media and communications of the Buhari campaign organization.
According to him, what the public should be talking about in respect to President Buhari’s 100 days in office are milestones reached within the period under review, rather than achievements.
He said: “We prefer to talk about milestones instead of achievements. Whether the milestones represent achievements or not, that is left for the people to decide. Milestones have been achieved which is important for the country”.
On what the president said during his lecture at Chatham House in London, he said, “The president never promised anything to anyone. It is on record in that lecture at Chatham House they asked him a question relating to expectations and what he specifically would do in relation to certain documents that were flying around committing him to this thing or that thing within 100 days.
“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 then get the intelligence – the knowledge of things that are going on- and I will fully commit myself to serving Nigeria’”.
“My point is that as the director, media and communications of that campaign, 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. 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, ” Shehu stated.
Responding to the question regarding the claim that the APC had posted the documents on its website, he said, “APC had a campaign in which there were so many centres of public communication and unfortunately 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.
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