Abdullahi the millet farmer used to drink from a pond. Now he gushes with praise for the man who brought him a tap. That man has just become president. “Given what he’s done here, we’re very hopeful,” says Abdullahi, waiting to fill a jerry can at a new maternity hospital in his village of mud and donkeys. “All I know for certain is that he will do great things for Nigeria.”

People in President Umaru Yar’Adua’s northern Katsina State are confident he can recreate the schools, roads and clinics he delivered as governor to an entire country desperate for services that work.