ABUJA, Nigeria — Former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has passed away at the age of 82 in a London clinic, his family announced.
The nation’s immediate former President had reportedly traveled to the United Kingdom in April for a routine medical check-up but subsequently fell ill.
Buhari, a former military ruler who later embraced democratic principles, returned to power through elections but faced significant challenges in convincing Nigerians that he could deliver on his promised reforms.
Though never a natural politician, he was often perceived as aloof and austere. Nevertheless, he maintained a reputation for personal honesty, a rare distinction for a Nigerian political figure.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Buhari achieved a historic victory in 2015, becoming the first opposition candidate in the country to defeat an incumbent president. He was subsequently re-elected for another four-year term in 2019.
Buhari had consistently enjoyed strong support among the poor in northern Nigeria, known as the “talakawa” in the Hausa language. For his 2015 campaign, he benefited from a unified opposition coalition rallying behind him.
Many of his supporters believed that his military background and disciplinarian credentials were precisely what the country needed to effectively address the Islamist insurgency in the north.
Buhari also pledged to combat corruption and nepotism within the government and to create employment opportunities for young Nigerians.
However, his tenure coincided with a significant slump in global oil prices and Nigeria’s most severe economic crisis in decades. His administration also drew criticism for its handling of insecurity.
Despite campaigning on a promise to defeat the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, the group continues to pose a threat, with one of its factions now affiliated with the so-called Islamic State group.
The period also saw an escalation in deadly clashes between farmers and ethnic Fulani herders in central Nigeria. As a Fulani himself, Mr. Buhari faced accusations of not being sufficiently firm with the herders or doing enough to de-escalate the crisis.
The activities of so-called bandits in the north-western part of the country also led to the abduction of hundreds of secondary school students. Under his watch, armed forces were accused of human rights abuses, notably opening fire on anti-police brutality protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos in October 2020.
Who was Muhammadu Buhari?
Muhammadu Buhari was born in December 1942 in Daura, Katsina state, in the far north of Nigeria, near the border with Niger. At the time of his birth, Nigeria was under British colonial rule, gaining independence 18 years later.
Buhari’s father, a Fulani, passed away when he was four, and he was raised by his Kanuri mother.
In a 2012 interview, Buhari mentioned being his father’s 23rd child and his mother’s 13th. His only recollection of his father was an incident where the two of them and one of his half-brothers were thrown from the back of a horse.
The young Buhari attended primary school in Daura before proceeding to boarding school in Katsina city. After completing school, he was admitted to the Nigerian Military Training College, joining the Nigerian army shortly after the country’s independence.
Buhari underwent officer training in the UK from 1962-1963, steadily ascending through the ranks thereafter.
In later years, Buhari attributed his disciplinarian nature to his formative years spent in boarding school, where corporal punishment was common, and his subsequent military training. He considered himself “lucky” to have experienced such rigorous environments, which he believed instilled in him a strong work ethic.
In 1966, Nigeria experienced both a military coup and a counter-coup, a period of significant upheaval for army officers. However, Buhari consistently maintained that he was too junior to have played any significant role in these events.
Less than a decade later, under a military government, Buhari had risen to become the military governor of the north-east, an area that then encompassed six states.
After less than a year in this role, Buhari, then in his mid-30s, was promoted again in 1976, becoming the federal commissioner for petroleum and natural resources (effectively the oil minister) under Olusegun Obasanjo’s first tenure as Nigerian head of state.
Indiscipline and corruption
By 1978, Buhari, then a colonel, had returned to a military command role. His decisive action in 1983, when Chadian soldiers annexed some Nigerian islands in Lake Chad, is still remembered in the north-east. He blockaded the area and successfully repelled the invaders.
The end of 1983 saw another coup, this time against elected President Shehu Shagari, and Buhari, now a major-general, became the country’s military ruler.
By his own account, he was not among the plotters but was installed (and later removed) by those who wielded the real power and required a figurehead.
Other accounts, however, suggest he played a more active role in Shagari’s removal than he was willing to admit.
Buhari’s 20-month rule is remembered for a stringent campaign against indiscipline and corruption, alongside accusations of human rights abuses.
Approximately 500 politicians, officials, and businessmen were jailed as part of this anti-waste and anti-corruption drive.
While some viewed this as heavy-handed military repression, others praised it as a commendable effort to combat the pervasive corruption hindering Nigeria’s development.
Buhari maintained a rare reputation for honesty among Nigerian politicians, both military and civilian, largely due to this campaign.
As part of his “war against indiscipline,” he famously ordered Nigerians to form neat queues at bus stops, often under the watchful eyes of soldiers wielding whips. Civil servants who arrived late for work were publicly humiliated by being forced to perform frog jumps.
While some of his measures might have been seen as merely eccentric, others were genuinely repressive, such as a decree restricting press freedom, which led to the imprisonment of journalists.
Buhari’s government also incarcerated Nigeria’s renowned musical icon, Fela Kuti, a persistent critic of successive leaders, on trumped-up charges related to currency exports. Buhari’s attempts to re-balance public finances by curbing imports resulted in significant job losses and business closures.
As part of anti-corruption measures, he also mandated a currency replacement, changing the color of naira notes and forcing all holders of old notes to exchange them at banks within a limited timeframe.
Prices subsequently rose while living standards declined, leading to Buhari’s ousting and imprisonment for 40 months in August 1985, with Army Chief Gen. Ibrahim Babangida assuming power.
Historic election victory
After his release and, as he stated, having witnessed the consequences of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Buhari decided to enter party politics. He became convinced of the merits of multi-party democracy and free and fair elections.
Despite this shift, Buhari consistently defended the 1983 coup, stating in 2005: “The military came in when it was absolutely necessary and the elected people had failed the country.”
He also refuted accusations that his measures against journalists and others had been excessive, insisting that he had merely been enforcing laws that others were breaking.
He was elected president in 2015, marking the first time an opposition candidate had defeated an incumbent since the return of multi-party democracy in 1999.
As president, Buhari emphasized his “incorruptibility,” publicly declaring his relatively modest wealth and asserting that he had “spurned several past opportunities” to enrich himself. He was known for his plain-spoken nature, which sometimes served him well in the media and at other times did not.
Although few doubted his personal commitment to fighting corruption, and several high-profile individuals were held accountable, some questioned whether the systemic structures enabling mismanagement had truly been reformed.
Furthermore, efforts to improve youth employment prospects remained, at best, a work in progress.
‘Bag of Rice’ and ‘Baba Go Slow’
On the day Buhari left office, a widely shared social media video captured Nigerians asked what they would remember most about his time in office. All respondents gave the same answer: “Bag of rice.”
The reason was simple: rice is a staple food in the country. A standard 50kg (110lb) bag of rice, sufficient to feed a household of eight to ten for about a month, cost merely 7,500 naira ($5; £3) under President Goodluck Jonathan, whom Buhari defeated in 2015.
However, this price surged to 60,000 naira just a few years into Buhari’s presidency, leading to widespread hunger in many parts of the country. This dramatic increase in rice prices was a direct consequence of Buhari’s policy to ban rice importation, an echo of his earlier stance as a military ruler, aimed at encouraging domestic cultivation.
However, local producers were unable to meet the high demand, causing many of his supporters to lose faith in his economic policies. Ismail Danyaro, a resident of Kano, a northern city, stated that he had supported Buhari since his initial presidential bid in 2003.
“I used to buy a 50kg bag of rice under Goodluck [Jonathan] but when Buhari came, I found it difficult to buy even a 25kg bag of rice because it became so expensive,” he told this publication. At one point, even Buhari’s wife reportedly threatened not to support his re-election bid.
Nigerians are fond of nicknames, and some leaders’ monikers have endured long after their terms. For instance, former military leader Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is still known as “Maradona” due to perceptions of his tactical maneuvering on issues.
For Buhari, it was “Baba [Father] go slow,” a nickname he earned after taking six months to name his first cabinet upon assuming office in 2015. Responding to this nickname years later, Buhari asserted that the delay was not his fault. “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 2022-2023 proved to be one of the most intriguing periods in the country’s democratic history. In the perception of many, it was the first time a sitting president appeared genuinely unconcerned about his successor.
Publicly, Buhari declared he would support whoever won his party’s (All Progressives Congress) nomination, but insiders suggested his stance was ambivalent behind the scenes. Buhari’s body language emboldened all five candidates seeking the APC’s endorsement, and their supporters universally claimed to have his backing.
At one juncture, it seemed as though Buhari opposed the candidacy of his eventual successor, Bola Tinubu. This was followed by the announcement of the “naira swap policy,” which the Buhari administration stated would, among other things, limit the influence of money in the 2023 elections.
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Many Nigerians believed this policy was specifically aimed at preventing Tinubu from becoming president, despite his selection 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 insufficient new notes in circulation, leading to severe shortages and hardship for millions, particularly the less well-off, who rely on cash for their daily transactions.
The policy was only suspended after a Supreme Court ruling, just days before the election. Tinubu ultimately won narrowly, securing 37% of the votes cast, as the opposition remained divided.
Any comprehensive assessment of Buhari’s presidency must consider his declining health, which led to significant absences from work, particularly during his first term. While the former military ruler may have reinvented himself as a democrat, there was no similar commitment to transparency regarding his own health, leaving Nigerians uninformed about the fitness of their head of state for office.
Muhammadu Buhari was married twice: first to Safinatu Yusuf from 1971-1988, and then in 1989 to Aisha Halilu, who survives him. He had 10 children.
