A United Kingdom-based Nigerian economic analyst, Feyi Fawehinmi, has regretted supporting and donating money to the election campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari in the last general elections.
Fawehinmi, in an interview with Punch, he said that he considers his support for Buhari during the 2015 presidential election, a gross mistake.
“I supported Buhari in the last (presidential) election. I actively campaigned for him and donated my money to his campaign,” said Fawehinmi.
“If I have turned against him, it is since he got into office and based entirely on his government’s policy choices. I have nothing personal against him.
Asked when started losing hope in Buhari’s much talked about change, Fawehinmi said:
“It was sometime midway last year. It just became clear to me that the government sold one thing during the campaign and were doing another thing entirely upon assumption of power.
“The sheer pointless and needless suffering Nigerians have been put through in the name of discredited ideas and waste-of-time economic policies has been too much to bear.
“For me, Nigeria is the point of any support and I consider it a serious mistake on my part to have blindly supported Buhari like I did in 2015.
“I feel like I told people I was a mechanic and then they asked for my opinion on a car they wanted to buy. Without opening the engine, I simply told them to buy the car based on how the body looked.
“I can’t speak for anyone else but the lesson for me is that no matter how much you dislike someone and want to get rid of them – and I really disliked Goodluck Jonathan’s government – it is important to always be sceptical even for your own side. We did not question Buhari hard enough.
“We should have pressed him harder to force him to make clear commitments and adopt clear positions we wanted before the elections. Something like taking six months to appoint ministers was such an irritating and costly waste of time. And it came as a surprise to even his supporters. But we all gave him the benefit of the doubt. We allowed him to get away with too much too easily,” he said.