On Sunday, July 13, Nigerians and indeed the world were shocked with the death of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who died at the age of 82 in a clinic in London, United Kingdom.
Announcing the death, former presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, in a post on X wrote: “The family of the former President has announced the passing on of the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, this afternoon in a clinic in London. May Allah accept him in Aljannatul Firdaus, Amin.”
Buhari, who had been battling an undisclosed ailment, was recently discharged from an intensive care unit in London, according to family sources.
He was said to have taken ill during a routine medical visit abroad and had remained under observation in the weeks leading up to his passing.
Though details of the illness were not made public, the former president was believed to be recuperating until his condition took a turn.
A retired major general and one of Nigeria’s most recognisable political figures, Buhari served first as military head of state from 1983 to 1985, before returning as an elected president in 2015.
After three failed attempts, Buhari achieved a historic victory in 2015, becoming the country’s first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent. In 2019, he was re-elected for another four-year term.
Buhari had always been popular among the poor of the north (known as the “talakawa” in the Hausa language) but for the 2015 campaign, he had the advantage of a united opposition grouping behind him.
Many of those who supported him thought his military background and disciplinarian credentials were what the country needed to get to grips with the Islamist insurgency in the north.
Buhari also promised to tackle corruption and nepotism in government, and create employment opportunities for young Nigerians. As president, Buhari made a virtue of his ‘incorruptibility,’ declaring his relatively modest wealth and saying he had ‘spurned several past opportunities’ to enrich himself.
He was plain spoken by nature, which sometimes played well for him in the media and sometimes badly. Although few doubted his personal commitment to fighting corruption and there were several notable scalps, some questioned whether the structures enabling mismanagement had really been reformed.
And attempts to improve youth employment prospects were, at best, a work in progress. His administration made efforts to diversify the economy away from oil dependence and promote agriculture, focusing on developing agriculture, manufacturing, and other sectors to reduce reliance on oil. He implemented the Treasury Single Account (TSA) to consolidate government revenues and improve transparency.
But his time in office coincided with a slump in global oil prices and the country’s worst economic crisis in decades. His administration also came under fire for its handling of insecurity. While campaigning he had promised to defeat the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
But the group remains a threat and one of its factions is now affiliated to the so-called Islamic State group. There was also an upsurge in deadly clashes between farmers and ethnic Fulani herders in the middle belt region. Buhari, a Fulani, was accused of not being tough enough on the herders or doing enough to stop the crisis.
The activities of the bandits in the north-western part of the country saw the abduction of hundreds of secondary school students. Under his watch armed forces were accused of human rights abuses – like opening fire on anti-police brutality protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos in October 2020.
Also under his watch, separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) led by Nnamdi Kanu became a high profile group advocating for Biafra independence. Likewise, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (Shia) suffered hundreds of fatalities leading to the arrest and detention of the leader of the group, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky.
Because of his slow approach in taking actions, Nigerians nicknamed Buhari ‘Baba go slow’ after it took him six months to name his first cabinet on assuming office in 2015. Responding to his nickname years later, Buhari said it was not his fault that it took so long to get anything done. “Yes, we are slow because the system is slow.
It’s not Baba that is slow but it is the system so I am going by this system and I hope we will make it,” he said in 2018. Nigerian politics in 2022 and 2023 remains one of the most interesting in the country’s democratic history. In the minds of many, it was the first time that a sitting president wasn’t really bothered about who his successor was going to be.
Openly, Buhari declared he would support whoever won his party’s (All Progressives Congress) nomination but insiders say behind the scenes he was ambivalent. Buhari’s body language emboldened all five candidates seeking the APC’s endorsement and their supporters all went around saying they had his backing.
At one point it felt as if Buhari opposed the candidacy of his eventual successor, President Bola Tinubu. What followed was the declaration of the ‘naira swap policy’ which the Buhari administration an nounced would, among other things, limit the influence of money in the 2023 elections.
Many Nigerians believed that the policy was targeted at preventing Tinubu from becoming president even though he had been chosen as the APC candidate. The policy involved the confiscation of trillions of old naira notes and their replacement with new notes for the highest denominations.
However, there were not enough new notes, leading to shortages and suffering by millions, particularly the less-privileged, who rely on cash for their daily transactions. The policy was only suspended after a Supreme Court ruling, just days before the election.
Before Buhari became an elected President, during his tenure as Federal Commissioner of Petroleum and Natural Resources, $2.8 billion allegedly went missing from the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. General Ibrahim Babangida later allegedly accused Buhari of being responsible for this fraud.
However, in the conclusion of the Crude Oil Sales Tribunal of Inquiry headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe to investigate allegations of $2.8 billion misappropriation from the NNPC account, the tribunal found no truth in the allegations even though it noticed some lapses in the NNPC accounts.
