14th September, 2023
Muhammadu Buhari handed over power as president to Bola Ahmed Tinubu on 29, May 2023 after spending eight years in office.
The President who was elected into office in 2015 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC had before his exit in power indicated that he will retire to his hometown, Daura, Katsina State where he has a farm and a ranch.
He had also indicated that he may just move across Nigeria’s border to the Niger Republic where he still has some of his relations if things get too heated up for him in the country.
But with the takeover of governance in Niger by the military, that option may no longer be on the table for Buhari.
As it is, the former President has been holed up in Daura, though reports indicated that he has also visited London where he usually goes for medical check up after his exit from power.
Last Wednesday, the Tinubu administration celebrated its 100 days in office.
The day also marked 100 days since Buhari handed over in Eagles Square, Abuja from where he departed to the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport where he was flown straight to Daura.
So, how has the former President spent the last 100 days in retirement? Garba Shehu, a former presidential spokesperson gave inklings in an article titled ‘One hundred days after Buhari’ published on Thursday.
According to Shehu, the former President shared his time between his farm and receiving the large number of visitors who thronged Daura from every part of the country weekly.
“He goes to the farm four days of the week and is upbeat about how well the crops and his animals are now doing,” Shehu wrote while noting that Buhari still receives a high number of visitors.
“He gets a good measure of rest but the visits have not abated. To manage the numbers, he has a weekly program drawn for him as they did while he was in the Villa.
“Visitors are scheduled on the program but there are so many people who just start their motorbikes and cars to head out to Daura to him in the belief that he has the time to receive all visitors.
“Among his many “special guests” are party faithful, grassroots groups, farmers, artisans, artists, praise singers, nurses and doctors, religious leaders, community leaders and several other professionals. Not left out are those who benefited from the administration, one way or another,” said the former presidential spokesperson. He added that the former President’s hope that the increase in the price of petrol will reduce the number of people coming to see him has not materialised.
“The other day, he was musing 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 coming one by one, his friends, including the poor and the marginalized, now group themselves, share costs to hire buses to come to see and talk to him,”
According to the former presidential spokesperson, the high number of visitors indicated that while some Nigerians are happy that the President is not in office, there are some, even more, who continue to cherish and admire him.
“In the eight years he led the country, Muhammadu Buhari had taken many decisions and as is human, one or two may have been wrong. But no one, not even critics, can question his intentions when those decisions were taken.
“There has not been a single area that has not been touched by the Buhari government, with massive, positive changes in the eight years he held fort”.