Ismael Ahmed, Executive Chairman of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (PCNGi) has said that most of the people who supported the late Muhammadu Buhari’s ambition to become presisent were young people.
Ahmed while speaking in an interview on Channels Television said some of Buhari’s younger supporters also did not understand some of the actions the former presisent took as a military head of state.
According to Ahmed, the support for the late former president by the younger generation stemmed from the kind of life he lived
His words, “People who supported President Buhari since he joined politics, interestingly were not people who knew him when he was military head of state because they were probably young and may not have understood what was going on.
“Most of the bulk of his support came from younger people under 35 who believe in him because they see someone who has had the privilege to be in the corridors of power since 1966, yet he doesn’t have the kind of wealth paraded by others who have had the same opportunities or even less,” Ahmed said.
He said the young people never saw the late Buhari living an ostentatious lifestyle like the average Nigerian politician.
“I think that kind of endeared him to a lot of people and I think his stint as chairman of PTF in 1994 through 1998 and what he had been able to do with the Petroleum Task Force just endeared a lot of the younger generation to him and showed them what he would be able to achieve.
“Fast forward to when he was encouraged to join politics by some of his friends and people who were close associates, most of them are dead now.
“But they were the ones who pushed him to join politics in 2002 and then from then on he convinced himself that this is the way to go and had a continuation to make to Nigeria,” he added.
Ahmed further stated that the late former president always found it difficult to understand why people were corrupt or had the need to steal from public coffers.
He said, “He (Buhari) just gets confused when people are unbelievably corrupt; he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand what people are looking for.”
