THE ELUSIVE LEGACY OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI: AN INTRODUCTION
The passing of Muhammadu Buhari on July 13, 2025, in London at age 82, has not simplified the task of defining his legacy. For many Nigerians and observers, Buhari remains an enigma – a figure whose life spanned military dictatorship and democratic rule, austere discipline and profound governance failures, unwavering personal integrity and systemic national decline. As one Lagos-based writer noted, “He inherited unprecedented goodwill and squandered it”. This paradox makes any attempt to distill his essence fraught with tension.
Buhari’s dual identities defy easy categorization. As a young major general, he seized power in 1983 through a military coup, launching the infamous “War Against Indiscipline” that saw citizens flogged for lateness and journalists jailed under Decree No. 4. Yet decades later, he reinvented himself as a “converted democrat,” winning the 2015 presidential election as an opposition candidate – a historic first in Nigeria – on promises to combat corruption and defeat Boko Haram. His personal reputation for austerity remained untarnished; he lived modestly, avoided self-enrichment, and championed anti-graft initiatives like the Single Treasury Account, which recovered billions in stolen assets.
Still, his leadership was shadowed by deep contradictions. The man who promised security presided over escalating violence: Boko Haram expanded its rural strongholds, ISWAP emerged, and kidnapping epidemics swept the northwest. The president who vowed economic revival left Nigeria with record debt (N77 trillion, up from N42 trillion), unprecedented inflation (22.4%), and deepening poverty (133 million multidimensionally poor). His administration’s repression of the #EndSARS protests – culminating in the Lekki Toll Gate massacre – and the Twitter ban revealed an authoritarian streak at odds with his democratic persona.
Perhaps this duality explains why Buhari defies monolithic definition. He was both the northern “talakawa’s” champion and the architect of lopsided appointments favoring northern elites. A leader who invested in infrastructure (rails, bridges, agriculture) yet failed to translate projects into broad prosperity. As Alexis Akwagyiram observed, history may remember him as a symbol of democratic change, but one whose transformative potential remained unfulfilled.
In this essay, we confront Buhari not as a static icon but as a mirror reflecting Nigeria’s own contradictions. His legacy – like the man himself – belongs to everybody and nobody, a cold blend of integrity and impunity, progress and regression, leaving a nation still grappling with the meaning of his tumultuous reign.
PERSONAL ENCOUNTER: FROM HOPE TO TERROR
My encounter with Muhammadu Buhari’s legacy began not in scholarly analysis, but in the palpable fear of an upper six school boy home for the Christmas holidays on December 31, 1983. The sight of soldiers barricading major arteries of the highway leading to our village in Abiriba was some scene for me, their faces impassive under the tropical sun, signaled the violent rupture of Nigeria’s fragile democracy. The radio proclaimed a “corrective regime” that promised to excise corruption and restore national dignity – rhetoric that initially intoxicated some Elders I recall and various of my mates, spurned yarns about what’s to come; many of course, with no way to know what coming, celebrated the coup against Shehu Shagari’s flawed administration.
This intoxication swiftly soured into terror. Schools shuttered indefinitely. The chilling silence of state-controlled radio replaced vibrant debate. Midnight knocks on dissidents’ doors became commonplace, while journalists like Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor faced imprisonment under Decree 4 for the crime of factual reporting. Citizens were flogged publicly for queue-jumping – a perverse theater where the prescribed cure of “discipline” proved deadlier than the societal disease it purported to treat.
On the ground, authoritarianism wasn’t just a policy – it became a daily performance of cruelty. I saw young soldiers, most of them simply boys, drunk on their newfound authority, ordering elderly men to crawl like infants across dusty roads, their dignity shredded. Stronger men, mistaken for defiant, were met with savage lashes of the koboko – beaten not for crimes but for hesitating, for misunderstanding, or only because the soldier wanted to assert dominance.
The absurdity of power reached grotesque extremes. I witnessed then a pregnant woman who hawked wares, who cried out in protest when a soldier failed to pay the agreed price for goods. For this ordinary grievance, she was brutalized in full view of the public – a macabre reminder that under tyranny, even truth-telling becomes subversive.
This early template of repression and broken promises became the defining pattern of Buhari’s influence, culminating decades later in a presidential tenure (2015 – 2023) that left Nigeria economically crippled, violently fractured, and institutionally hollowed. His recent death closes a biographical chapter, unleashing a wave of solemn tributes from global corridors of power. World leaders like Narendra Modi extolled his “wisdom, warmth and unwavering commitment” to India-Nigeria ties, while President Bola Tinubu declared a week of national mourning with flags at half-mast. Former ministers and international institutions consecrated him as an “incorruptible patriot” and “moral compass” – sanctimonious paeans that echo through marble halls while street vendors in Kano’s Kurmi Market hawk tomatoes beside radios broadcasting these eulogies, their hollow laughter punctuating the air. For Hadiza, a mother of three selling roasted plantains in Lagos’ Oshodi terminal, such platitudes are obscenities: “They praise his austerity while my children share one egg for breakfast. Let them come eat ‘discipline’ with us.” The bitter aftertaste of his failures lingers in the daily struggles of millions – still living with the scars of a governance philosophy that weaponized discipline and demanded submission, not justice.
THE CULTIVATED PERSONA VS. HARSH REALITIES
Buhari masterfully cultivated the persona of “Mai Gaskiya” – the truthful one – leveraging public asset declarations, a modest home in Daura, and plain garments as a calculated contrast to the opulence of Nigeria’s elite political class. This carefully constructed image now serves as the cornerstone of his official hagiography, even as market women in Onitsha’s Main Market recount how his prohibition on rice imports transformed their stalls into graveyards of unsold goods. “They call him frugal,” scoffs Emeka, a tricycle operator in Lagos, “while his nephews drove armored SUVs through our potholed streets.” His rhetoric, steeped in anti-corruption zeal and moral rectitude, resonated deeply in a country where trust in leadership had long been eroded.
When the coup broke, and Buhari’s name replaced Shagari’s on every radio bulletin, it felt like a reset. At FESAS Ogoja, a school teeming with a mix of the country’s racial and regional template, with bright young minds and warring dreams of a better future, we tried to interpret it as a return to principle-driven governance. Soldiers in pressed khaki constantly moved about town with promises of discipline, anti-corruption, national rebirth.
We wanted to believe. But belief faded quickly – trampled under the boots of reality.
Talks in the hostels veered from reform to resignation. Our idealism, once ablaze, dimmed into something darker. I remember standing by the school’s rear fence watching armed soldiers guard stockpiles of relief rice meant for displaced villagers nearby. And yet, families were visibly hungry. .
Roads around town and the major highways in and out of Ogoja, either from Abakiliki or from Ikom, remained impassable, swallowed by erosion and years of neglect. Names of phantom contractors floated from government notices, while locals grumbled about unfulfilled tenders and missing equipment. We learned early that Buhari’s iron-fisted rhetoric didn’t crack the code of corruption – it reinforced it under new uniforms.
The myth didn’t erode. It imploded.
And on campus, those who had spoken his name with hope – the history teachers, the pre law students, even the skeptical depart heads – began to lower their voices. Not out of danger. Out of disappointment. The promise had turned to posturing. And the man who came bearing the sword of virtue slowly became the symbol of a system built not on truth, but on intimidation.
In the end before he was overthrown during that first coming, Buhari’s tenure revealed that personal frugality does not equal political integrity. His image was a well-tailored mask – but governance exposed the cracks beneath. The man who claimed to embody truth presided over a government that buried it in obfuscation.
METAMORPHOSIS: FROM AUTOCRAT TO “CONVERTED DEMOCRAT”
Muhammadu Buhari’s path from a stern autocrat to a self-proclaimed democrat is one of the most striking metamorphoses in Nigerian political history. His first foray into power was blunt and forceful: a 1983 coup that ousted the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. Buhari’s military regime quickly earned notoriety for its rigid discipline and repressive policies. The War Against Indiscipline became synonymous with public floggings, mass arrests, and decrees that left no room for dissent. Critics were jailed, journalists silenced, and even famed musician Fela Kuti wasn’t spared. The regime’s reach extended beyond borders – most infamously with the botched attempt to kidnap Umaru Dikko in London, a failed cloak-and-dagger operation that embarrassed Nigeria on the global stage.
But after his ouster in 1985, Buhari largely faded into the background until resurfacing in the late ’90s and early 2000s, notably as chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund. There, he projected an image of personal austerity and administrative efficiency. This period became the scaffold for his political rebranding. Gone was the iron-fisted general; in his place emerged a man who carefully cultivated the persona of Mai Gaskiya – retaining this symbolic title as a cornerstone of his revived identity. His ascetic lifestyle, unpretentious residence in Katsina, and declarations of public assets painted him as a moral foil to Nigeria’s extravagant elite.
Between 2003 and 2011, Buhari contested three presidential elections unsuccessfully, refining his rhetoric with each attempt. In London’s Chatham House in 2015, he performed the ultimate political pivot – declaring himself a “converted democrat” who had learned from his past and was committed to upholding the rule of law, electoral integrity, and democratic values. He positioned his past as a lesson, not a liability, and for a citizenry fatigued by corruption and insecurity, this redemption arc felt plausible.
It was not just a message – it was a movement. Buhari played a key role in creating the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), which eventually merged with other opposition parties to form the All Progressives Congress (APC). This alliance gave him the necessary political heft, and in 2015, he achieved what no Nigerian opposition candidate had before: defeating an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, in a general election.
It was hailed as a watershed moment in Nigerian democracy. Buhari’s rise seemed to symbolize national maturity – a former dictator transformed into a custodian of civilian governance. Yet the realities of his presidency soon invited skepticism, and the myth of redemption began to wear thin. Still, the transformation he orchestrated – from a ruler feared for his decrees to a leader embraced for his promise – remains a testament to how narrative, timing, and political savvy can reshape even the most rigid of reputations.
THE GREAT UNRAVELING: NEPOTISM, CORRUPTION, AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Muhammadu Buhari’s ascent to Nigeria’s presidency in 2015 was heralded as the triumph of a “converted democrat,” a former military ruler promising redemption. His resonant inaugural pledge – “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” – ignited hopes for a unifying force transcending Nigeria’s deep regional and religious divides. Yet within weeks, this lofty symbolism collided with the unerring nepotism that defined his career trajectory – bullet, ballot and beyond. Key appointments disproportionately favored his northern political base: 33 of 37 security agency chiefs hailed from the Muslim North, while ministers from his Fulani ethnic circle accumulated portfolios despite active corruption probes. Former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke faced Interpol manhunts while Abba Kyari – Buhari’s Chief of Staff implicated in MTN bribery scandals – remained untouchable. Northern street wisdom distilled this hypocrisy into a lethal proverb: “Buhari’s broom sweeps only southward.” This wasn’t perceived as mere imbalance; it was widely interpreted as systemic state capture by a narrow clique, igniting accusations of entrenched nepotism and deepening the very fissures his victory had momentarily bridged. The chasm between unifying rhetoric and exclusionary practice became the first crack in his administration’s foundation, fundamentally eroding national cohesion and trust.
The anti-corruption crusade, Buhari’s defining raison d’être and the core source of his initial moral authority, soon faced its own crisis of credibility. While the administration secured notable high-profile convictions and recovered stolen assets, a damning pattern of selectivity undermined its legitimacy. Opposition figures often faced relentless, public pursuit, while politically connected individuals within the ruling circle or northern establishment frequently enjoyed impunity or curiously delayed scrutiny. The case of Ahmed Idris became emblematic of this institutional rot: retained beyond retirement age as Accountant-General of the Federation, he was later arrested for embezzling over ₦100 billion – a scandal raising fundamental questions about oversight and vetting within Buhari’s inner sanctum. Even more corrosive to the presidency’s integrity claims was the alleged 6.2 million Central Bank forgery scandal, where a document bearing what appeared to be Buhari’s signature authorized a suspicious withdrawal. These episodes transformed the anti-corruption drive from a national mission into a perceived weapon of political consolidation, devastating its moral standing. Economically, Buhari inherited significant challenges but presided over their dramatic deterioration. His policy approach often seemed anchored in 1980s-style control mechanisms, increasingly out of step with 21st-century complexities. The same man lauded in eulogies for his “austerity” oversaw an oil sector hemorrhaging 4 billion annually to thieves – including the surreal discovery of a 4km illegal pipeline siphoning crude undetected for nine years. His social-investment programs became cannibalized patronage networks: N-Power coordinators in Adamawa drove Range Rovers while beneficiaries starved. The 2019 decision to close land borders, intended to spur domestic agriculture, backfired catastrophically, triggering acute food inflation and shortages that disproportionately punished the poor. The artificial pegging of the naira to the dollar created a crippling parallel market, starved businesses of essential forex, and fueled rampant inflation; its eventual, chaotic collapse inflicted further economic shock.
The true social shockwave from fuel subsidy removal stemmed less from the act itself than from the blatant hypocrisy surrounding its politically motivated delay. Despite President Buhari and his spokesmen (Adesina, Shehu) openly conceding the subsidy’s fiscal unsustainability, they opted to maintain it until the very end of his administration. Public justifications centered on shielding the vulnerable, framing Buhari as a “friend of the masses.” However, this paternalistic narrative masked the raw political truth: as Buhari conceded, removing the subsidy earlier would have been an electoral “suicide mission” for the APC in 2023.
This strategic deferral laid bare a governance contradiction: Buhari championed economic reform rhetorically while practicing political preservation. The inevitable, complex task of removal – requiring robust compensatory mechanisms – was offloaded onto his successor. The succeeding administration was forced to act without the preparatory groundwork and social safety nets Buhari had ample time to establish. The predictable consequence? An economic shock significantly amplified by this lack of preparation, manifesting in surging poverty, inflation, and public outrage.
Compounding this failure, the episode unfolded against Buhari’s broader economic legacy: two recessions and historic unemployment levels. These factors systematically eroded national potential and crushed public hope. For millions of Nigerians, particularly the youth, these weren’t distant figures but daily hardships. The subsidy delay became a stark symbol of him emblematic self.
THE CORE BETRAYAL: SYSTEMIC KLEPTOCRACY AND ECONOMIC RUIN
Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency ultimately crystallizes as the catastrophic mismanagement of a nation’s desperate hope. Inheriting unprecedented goodwill and a mandate for renewal, his tenure instead etched its legacy in the calcification of poverty, the metastasis of insecurity, the poisoning of ethno-regional relations, and the deliberate hollowing of institutions. His defining anti-corruption crusade imploded under the weight of brazen selectivity, while the proclaimed “converted democrat” governed through an inner-circle cabal, actively fueling the very inequalities he vowed to dismantle. As one commentator starkly summarized, the outcome was “squandered goodwill, deepening inequality, and a nation left salvaging ruins.” This transcends political failure; it is a collective national trauma – the anguish of a betrayed promise.
This betrayal unfolded not as a sudden collapse, but as the slow, inevitable erosion of a carefully constructed myth. The foundations of decay were laid early: his military regime’s “War Against Indiscipline” served as brutal theatre, masking systemic rot while he, as Petroleum Minister (1976–1978), presided over opaque dealings that normalized the secrecy later defining his rule. Even then, his economic interventions foreshadowed chaos, like the disastrous 1984 naira recoloring – a blunt-force trauma to the economy leaving citizens stranded and bewildered, a grim preview of monetary crises to come.
His civilian presidency (2015–2023), however, unleashed the full, toxic bloom of institutionalized kleptocracy. The “Mai Gaskiya” façade crumbled irreparably as high-profile opposition figures faced relentless prosecution, while politically connected allies embroiled in multi-billion naira scandals were seamlessly absorbed into the government apparatus. The perverse reality became undeniable: joining the ruling party often meant legal immunity. This wasn’t perception; it was operational doctrine – justice meticulously calibrated to power.
The most profound violation occurred where he wielded direct control: the oil sector. As substantive Petroleum Minister, Buhari presided over an industrial-scale haemorrhage of national wealth. Billions vanished annually through orchestrated theft, exemplified not by the previously mentioned pipeline, but by the scandal surrounding the multi-billion dollar AKK gas pipeline project. Despite massive allocations and Buhari’s personal inaugurations of construction phases, progress stalled amidst allegations of inflated contracts and diverted funds – a white elephant symbolizing the looting of strategic national assets under his direct supervision. Simultaneously, the state oil company, NNPC, became a black box, failing spectacularly to remit colossal oil revenues owed to the national treasury, with investigations vanishing into bureaucratic voids.
Social intervention programs, touted as poverty lifelines, mutated into predatory patronage systems. Initiatives like the school feeding scheme and N-Power saw billions evaporate, while intended beneficiaries starved. The Anchor Borrowers’ Programme epitomized this perversion: designed as an agricultural lifeline, it devolved into a slush fund for elites, disbursing phantom loans to cronies while genuine farmers faced crippling debt and ruinous crop failures without support.
By 2023, the veneer had vaporized. Transparency International ranked Nigeria 154th in corruption – worse than the very administrations Buhari had demonized. His personal frugality, once a beacon, was now starkly revealed as a fig leaf for a rapacious ruling class. The lesson was brutal: individual asceticism offers zero protection against systemic rot.
The economic catastrophe mirrored this moral bankruptcy. Buhari’s archaic, control-based economic dogma proved catastrophically mismatched to 21st-century realities. Policies like the prolonged border closure (2019–2022), intended to boost local production, instead strangled cross-border economies vital to millions, enriching smuggling syndicates while triggering food scarcity hyperinflation. His administration’s stubborn retention of the petrol subsidy – a known fiscal time bomb costing billions monthly – exemplified a dangerous inertia, deliberately offloading the inevitable explosive removal onto his successor without laying essential compensatory groundwork.
The 2022 currency redesign became a nightmarish reprise of his 1980s rigidity, executed with breathtaking incompetence. The chaotic rollout wasn’t merely disruptive; it was lethal. Nationwide, citizens faced bank siege warfare: interminable queues, ATM graveyards, and collapsing pensioners. The human cost was etched in stories like that of a pregnant woman in Port Harcourt who miscarried after days stranded in a banking hall crush – a tragedy underscoring how policy brutality shattered lives. It was economic sadism disguised as reform.
The financial toll was staggering: national debt exploding from 60 billion to 150 billion, much financing white-elephant projects like the vulnerable Lagos-Ibadan rail corridor, rendered perilous by bandits. Youth unemployment reached an unthinkable 53%. Inflation raged. The naira imploded. Over 133 million Nigerians sank into multidimensional poverty – the crushing arithmetic of failure.
This unraveling manifested beyond statistics. It was the silent despair in markets where stalls stood empty, the crumbling walls of underfunded schools, the hollow eyes of pensioners awaiting vanished stipends. The man who pledged national redemption departed, leaving a populace gasping for survival beneath the weight of his broken promises.
SECURITY FAILURES AND AUTHORITARIAN REFLEXES
Security, the other pillar of Buhari’s appeal bolstered by his military pedigree, deteriorated alarmingly. His early 2015 declaration of Boko Haram’s “technical defeat” proved tragically premature. The insurgency not only persisted but metastasized, while banditry and kidnapping exploded into industrial-scale enterprises across the northwest and central regions, and separatist tensions flared in the southeast. His early condemnations of Goodluck Jonathan’s “weakness” now echo as cruel irony: under Buhari, bandits annexed entire local governments in Zamfara, kidnapped Abuja-Kaduna train passengers in broad daylight, and established parallel taxation systems – transforming Nigeria’s heartland into a dystopian marketplace of terror. Large swathes of territory effectively slipped beyond state control, signifying a severe crisis of sovereignty. The October 2020 #EndSARS protests crystallized the nation’s deep-seated frustrations – a youth-led uprising against not just police brutality, but systemic governance failure and economic despair. Buhari’s initial concession, disbanding the notorious SARS unit, was instantly negated by the military’s lethal assault on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate, where rights groups documented at least 12 killings. His subsequent national address, refusing to acknowledge the massacre and branding protesters “rioters,” exposed a perilous disconnect and authoritarian reflex, permanently scarring his relationship with a generation and marking a defining moment of state violence.
Compounding these governance failures were Buhari’s personal missteps and symbolic stumbles, which further eroded his image. The 2016 plagiarism of Barack Obama’s victory speech was more than an embarrassment; it signaled carelessness and undermined trust in his message. His infamous remark to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that his wife “belongs in the kitchen, the living room, and the other room,” coupled with his dismissal of Nigerian youth as “lazy” (igniting the viral #LazyNigerianYouths backlash), weren’t just gaffes. They revealed an ossified, patriarchal worldview glaringly at odds with contemporary Nigerian society, sparking justified outrage. Most potent, however, were his prolonged medical absences in London. Beyond fueling bizarre rumors, they created a tangible leadership vacuum, paralyzing governance and becoming a painful national metaphor for a country itself perceived as ailing, absent, and adrift.
SECURITY PROMISES BROKEN AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS
Buhari’s core electoral promise – leveraging his military credentials to defeat Boko Haram – met a similar fate of catastrophic failure, transforming insecurity into hydra-headed chaos. Despite early territorial gains, Boko Haram factions, including ISIS-West Africa, retained lethal potency, overrunning military bases. The Chibok girls’ tragedy (2014), which helped propel him to power, was eclipsed under his watch: 1,500 students were kidnapped between 2020–2021 alone. Security forces, underfunded and demoralized, committed atrocities like the 2015 Zaria massacre of 347 Shia Muslims, buried in mass graves. His greatest security failure, however, was the transformation of farmer-herder clashes into industrialized banditry. Northwest Nigeria descended into a nightmare where motorcycle-riding militias kidnapped schoolchildren en masse, pillaged villages, and imposed illegal taxes – a crisis killing over 10,000 and displacing millions. Buhari, himself Fulani, faced widespread accusations of ethnic bias for failing to decisively rein in kinsmen, while his “grazing reserves” proposal inflamed southern governors who perceived it as state-sanctioned land grabs. His military mindset inevitably birthed repression. Soldiers slaughtered demonstrators at Lekki in 2020; separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu was renditioned from Kenya in defiance of domestic and international law; Twitter was banned for hosting dissent. For my family in Kaduna, nights became punctuated by gunfire symphonies – a grim soundtrack to the shattered promise of security. This was not reform; it was the 1983 playbook reloaded: governance by fear, not law or consensus.
Understanding this trajectory requires examining the psychological scaffolding of Buhari’s leadership. His worldview, forged in colonial-era boarding schools where corporal punishment was routine and British military academies prizing obedience over critical thought, cemented destructive tenets. Hierarchy became virtue, manifesting in humiliating “frog jump” punishments for tardy civil servants, reducing citizenship to mere compliance. Complexity was an enemy; despite overseeing Nigeria’s oil boom as Petroleum Minister in the 70s, he displayed no grasp of economic diversification, dooming policies from 1985 currency reforms to 2019 border closures. Dissent was pathological, leading to Fela Kuti’s imprisonment on spurious charges in 1984 – a precursor to the 2020 Twitter ban. This ingrained psychology ensured Buhari the “democrat” remained fundamentally Buhari the general. He appointed northern Muslims to 97% of top security posts, dismissed the Lekki massacre as “mischief,” and ruled through opaque body language rather than transparent policy. His extended medical absences – over five months in London during 2017 alone – epitomized a significantdisconnect. While he received world-class care abroad, Nigerian hospitals lacked basic paracetamol. The darkly comic “body double” rumors circulating in 2017 symbolized a leadership so physically and morally absent, citizens questioned its very existence. His deathbed plea for pardon rings hollow for the mothers of #EndSARS victims still seeking justice, and for a generation raised under the shadow of his failures.
THE CYCLE CLOSES
Muhammadu Buhari’s life stands as a mirror to Nigeria’s contradictions: a nation drowning in oil wealth yet pauperized by greed; rich in ethnic diversity yet fractured by nepotism; yearning for order yet consumed by self-inflicted chaos. As global eulogies laud his “patriotism,” traders in reported Markets across the country, burn copies of newspapers carrying his obituaries. While dignitaries gather in Abuja’s National Mosque for his funeral rites, farmers in Benue count fresh graves from herdsmen attacks. This chasm between elite canonization and mass trauma forces the essential reckoning: Was he the “moral compass” extolled by statesmen, or the tribalist who weaponized identity to entrench a narrow elite? Can history forgive a leader whose finest hour was piously declaiming “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” while governing exclusively for a singular ethno-religious clique?
My journey – from the frightened schoolboy of 1983 to the disillusioned observer of 2025 – crystallizes three irreducible truths his legacy imparts.
First, personal probity is no substitute for systemic integrity; his famed austerity masked a corrosive tolerance for kleptocracy that normalized grand theft as statecraft.
Second, military mindsets are fundamentally incompatible with democratic building; his belief in coercion over consensus accelerated national unraveling.
Third, true legacy is measured in human dignity; the 133 million Nigerians condemned to multidimensional poverty irrevocably outweigh any concrete infrastructure project or rhetorical flourish.
As Africa confronts a resurgent wave of military coups, Buhari’s story serves as a vital caution: soldiers who exchange khaki for agbada still carry the DNA of dictatorship. Nigeria’s path to healing demands an unflinching confrontation with his contradictions – not their canonization. The arduous work of national redemption begins precisely where his era ended: amidst the ruins of promises unkept, the unmarked graves of the forgotten, and the fragile, resilient hope of those who still dare to believe this wounded land can be salvaged.
When one surveys the arc of Muhammadu Buhari’s public life, a sense of circularity becomes inescapable – an odyssey that began with dramatic force and concluded in a quiet unraveling. It is difficult not to feel, as I do, that the promise of transformation gradually gave way to a disheartening familiarity.
I often recall the image of that youthful, steel-eyed soldier who emerged in 1983, imposing order with a military fist. He represented himself as Nigeria’s righteous scourge against decay – disciplined, untainted, and unwilling to accommodate the rot that had seeped into the nation’s institutions. His “War Against Indiscipline” wasn’t just a slogan – it was enforced quite literally, through corporal punishment and imprisonment, even of journalists. At the time, there was something fearsome but oddly reassuring about such resolve.
From the very start, I stood firm in my rejection of any Buhari government. It didn’t matter how they repackaged him – new suit, polished speeches, PR miracles – I wasn’t buying it. I warned anyone willing to listen, and even those who weren’t. My grandmother used to say, with the kind of clarity that slices through illusions: “A leopard never changes its spots, and no matter how much you scrub a pig, it will always go back to the mud.” That wasn’t folklore – it was prophecy. Buhari wasn’t some misunderstood statesman awaiting redemption. He was who he had always been. And I never – never – believed his presidency would be anything other than a continuation of the same tired script.
Then came 2015, and with it, the whirlwind. The air buzzed with a dangerous cocktail of hope and delusion. That same man – once feared, now somehow celebrated – rolled out his tenure like a messiah of democracy. “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” he declared, cloaked in borrowed poetry. Nigerians, desperate for change, suspended disbelief and reached for the illusion. But I didn’t waver. I watched the frenzy, unmoved. The past hadn’t been erased – it had been repackaged and sold back to us in glossy wrappers. While the nation leaned in, I stood my ground. Because the truth is, some masks don’t hide – they reveal. And I saw right through his.
But the test of leadership is not in slogans; it is in silence amid suffering. In 2020, as the #EndSARS protests erupted, it was our youth – the very cohort Buhari had pledged to champion – who bore the brunt of a broken system. What followed at Lekki Toll Gate is etched in painful memory. As the tragedy unfolded and demands for justice rose, Buhari’s absence was glaring. When he finally spoke, his tone struck me as curiously sterile, devoid of empathy. The mask he had so carefully worn in 2015 faltered. He no longer seemed to belong to “everybody,” and the people in anguish could find no trace of the man they had once dared to trust.
The downward spiral continued into 2023. The currency swap policy triggered upheaval across the country – a haunting echo of the 1984 episode, only more chaotic, more injurious. Elderly Nigerians, after decades of toil, found themselves collapsed in queues. Informal markets – the backbone of survival for millions – stood paralyzed. I watched this unfold and could not help but sense déjà vu, only this time magnified by deeper consequences. Buhari, yet again, was removed from the scene, disengaged at a moment when clarity and presence were most needed. It was not just the revisiting of old policy missteps; it was their amplification under the weight of time and disillusionment.
If we were to distill his legacy into a few key images, they would tell an unflattering but instructive tale. The soldier of 1983, the reformer of 2015, the absentee in 2020, the echo chamber of 2023 – each phase marked by intensifying distance from the citizenry. He arrived armed with the promise of restoration, but when the moment demanded compassion and courage, he receded. It wasn’t transformation he ushered in, but repetition – an entrapment in old cycles dressed in the garb of change.
The questions he once declared himself ready to answer now persist, heavier for having been neglected. That, to me, is the closing note of this cycle – not just the story of one man’s presidency, but of a nation still waiting.
BUHARI IN HIS OWN WORDS
WORDS THAT UNMASK – BUHARI IN HIS OWN VOICE
Leadership isn’t just about policies; it’s about posture. And if you listen closely, you’ll find that the most honest leaders aren’t those behind the podium, but those who speak unscripted – those whose words, often dismissed as slips, are actually windows into their worldview.
In Muhammadu Buhari’s case, his quotes were rarely mistaken. They were deliberate. They were revelations. And for those of us who watched, lived, and lost under his regime, they were chapters in a longer book we didn’t ask to read.
“I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.”
– Inaugural speech, 2015
This sounded noble on day one, but it quickly soured. From where I stood, it was a slogan drenched in ambiguity. If Buhari belonged to nobody, then perhaps he felt no urgency to answer to the suffering of everybody – especially the youth who clung to hope. He became an absentee president, governing not with presence, but with detachment.
2. “If we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.”
– 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit
I remember hearing this and thinking: finally, a man with conviction. But the conviction was skin-deep. Under his very nose, corruption metastasized. It was not just the number of scandals – it was their scale and the brazenness. The phrase became a cruel irony, as Nigerians lost faith while corruption danced unrestrained.
3. “Nigerian youths want to sit and do nothing.”
– London, 2018
This one hit me in the gut. My children, my students, my neighbors – they all hustle endlessly. In traffic. In tech. In textile. How dare he dismiss a generation built on sweat and scrap? His words weren’t just wrong; they were corrosive. They betrayed a deep misunderstanding of who we are and what we fight for daily.
4. “IPOB is just like a dot in a circle.”
– Arise TV interview, 2021
This one stung differently. I’ve weathered my share of tone-deaf proclamations from Nigeria’s power class, but this felt like a direct slap – not just to logic, but to identity. Among Ndigbo, this quote stirred deep currents. I remember writing in my diary: “Yes, we are a dot. But what a dot. No sentence is complete without a dot. Nigeria will never fully become until the dot is placed right – respectfully, purposefully.”
Whether Buhari meant it as a joke or a policy signal, it was laced with insensitivity. He didn’t misspeak; he spoke from a place of entrenched disregard. That circle he spoke of? It was his echo chamber – one where nuance, history, and the dignity of others are systematically drowned. His statement wasn’t just ignorant. It was dangerous in its reduction, revealing a man whose idea of unity meant erasure. This quote also brought back echoes of his military years – when dissent was suppressed and regional complexities oversimplified. To reduce a movement rooted in real grievances to a mere “dot” betrayed a dangerous unwillingness to listen. Nigeria isn’t made of dots – it’s made of people, pain, and a patchwork of longing.
5. “Many of those misbehaving today… will be treated in the language they understand.”
– Deleted Twitter post, 2021
I read this with chills. The language of force. The language of threat. Just like in 1983, when neighbors vanished under Decree 2, now tweets replaced tanks – but the message was the same. It reminded me that power, when unchecked, often speaks with fists instead of empathy.
6. “My wife belongs to my kitchen, my living room, and the other room.”
– Press conference, Germany, 2016
This wasn’t just a joke gone bad. It was a glimpse into an entrenched worldview – a refusal to recognize women beyond their domestic roles. It offended not only my wife and daughter, but my sense of progress. Leaders should inspire evolution, not entrench limitation.
7. “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement.”
– Seminar, 2001
This wasn’t a slip of tongue – it was Buhari without the benefit of stage management. No spin. No softening. Just the man, speaking from his core. In that moment, I saw not a national leader but a religious absolutist – a man who viewed pluralism as dilution, and governance through one lens only. His commitment wasn’t to unity – it was to ideology. And for Nigerians outside his worldview, especially those from the south or minority faiths, this statement felt like a dismissal, if not a warning. In this quote, he was exposed in his truest element: one who ruled not for all, but for those who mirrored him. This statement always stirred unease. Nigeria is a mixture of faiths, of secular hopes, of pluralistic promises. Such overt commitment cast shadows on his impartiality. As someone who values fairness, this felt like a betrayal of the inclusive nation I dream and hope for.
8. “A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill health.”
– Poland, 2018
For once, his vulnerability showed. But even here, I sensed self-pity over self-awareness. He never truly addressed the long absences, the public confusion, or the uncertainty he left behind. A leader who disappears leaves behind not sympathy – but instability.
9. “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015… the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
– Pre-election remark
Many chalked this up as hyperbole. I didn’t. I heard it for what it was: the language of a man who sees violence as a lever, not a last resort. Buhari wasn’t posturing here – he was revealing. This wasn’t a politician threatening chaos – it was a general relapsing into muscle memory. His words echoed back to 1983, where dissent met detention, and governance meant curfew. Nigeria under him became a place where force was favored over dialogue, and where Fulani terrorists found sanctuary in ambiguity and silence. It was no accident – it was alignment. This was not passion – it was provocation. It reminded me of the curfews and terror of 1983. A man who truly believes in democracy doesn’t reach for metaphors of violence. This painted him less as a statesman, more as a soldier unwilling to lay down his arms.
10. “As I retire home to Daura… I feel fulfilled that we have started the Nigerian rebirth.”
– Farewell speech, 2023
A rebirth? Perhaps. But it felt more like a coma. Infrastructure sprouted, yes, but integrity wilted. I didn’t feel reborn – I felt aged by the battles fought in silence, the hopes deferred, the speeches that rang hollow. He may rest fulfilled, but the rest of us are still struggling to rise.
WHY THESE WORDS MATTER: Each of these quotes peeled back the performance and gave us a peek into the operating system beneath. They weren’t just verbal misfires; they were ideological road signs. And for those of us who’ve known his regime from classroom curfews to digital censorship, these words are memorials to what we endured.
They unmask Buhari not as the accidental autocrat, but the intentional one. The man who governed from instinct, not introspection. Who believed loudness could replace listening, and whose legacy, stitched with such words, reminds us that language – especially from leaders – is never neutral.
A CONVERSATION WITH MY OWN HISTORY
They say time softens judgment. I disagree. Time only deepens clarity. And with Buhari, clarity came not through analysis – but through the words that escaped his own lips.
He said, “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement.”
There was no pause. No nuance. Just raw belief, laid bare. That wasn’t stagecraft – it was creed. He didn’t slip. He didn’t stutter. That was the real Buhari speaking: the soldier of ideology, not of nationhood. The man who saw difference as dilution, who wore bias like a badge and never truly believed in the messy, beautiful complexity of Nigeria.
He said, “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015… the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
And we all flinched. I remember that quote not as political theater, but as a confession. The instinctive reach for violence, the simmering threat beneath the agbada. He wasn’t joking. He was revealing – showing us the muscle-memory of a regime that had never truly left him. And for me, that was the moment I stopped expecting evolution.
When he dismissed IPOB as “just like a dot in a circle,” I knew this wasn’t just another government ignoring grievances. This was erasure masked as wit. But we, the dot, remain. And I wrote then – “No sentence is complete without a dot.” Nigeria will never find its rhythm without reckoning with those it keeps trying to write off.
Even in his silence, Buhari spoke. In delayed speeches. In absence. In indifference. And in every policy that shouted order but whispered neglect.
So, as he exits history’s stage, I am left not with fanfare but with fragments – quotes, echoes, indignities. His legacy won’t be sculpted by statues or sanitized essays. It will live in the lived experiences of people like me, who watched, who hoped, who hurt. And who remember.
FINAL WORDS: THE RECKONING
So here I am, rounding off this long walk through memory and indignation. It wasn’t supposed to end in fire, but how else do you mark the departure of a man whose tenure was forged in it?
Buhari. A name that once meant steel, then silence, then suffering. His story, etched across headlines and hagiographies, is already being rewritten in certain circles – with polished boots and British condolences, men in tailored Agbada and suits flying to the UK to weep beside the family of the fallen. But in the streets? In the places where policy wasn’t paper but pain – his name sparks jubilation, not mourning. People celebrate, not out of hatred, but relief.
The truth is simple. This wasn’t a misunderstood man. Buhari was never the reluctant dictator. He spoke clearly. His policies marched confidently. And his intentions never stuttered. He belonged to Sharia, not to the secular nation. He praised violent extremists while punishing peaceful protesters. And he closed the South only to fling open the North like an unguarded gate. That wasn’t oversight. It was orchestration.
A rebirth? What a hollow echo. He spoke of renewal from his opulent refuge in London – courtesy of public coffers pillaged under the guise of combating graft – while the very people he claimed to resurrect couldn’t even find a doctor in a makeshift clinic.
Under his watch, IDP camps in Katsina sprouted like weeds in abandoned fields, each tent a monument to broken promises. Churches went up in smoke, villages disappeared off the map, and soldiers who dared to stand against Fulani militias found themselves dismissed or thrown into detention rather than honored for their courage. Then, in the same breath, those militants – the architects of terror – were pardoned, retrained, and folded back into the state apparatus as if their bloodied hands merited applause.
Ask the widows who mourn beneath tattered cloth. Ask the displaced who wake to the roar of engines that bring no aid. Ask the pastors whose churches lie in ash, their congregations scattered like embers. These are the citizens who never saw the “rebirth” he trumpeted – only the coma of a nation robbed of its dignity, its security, its very soul, while its leader healed in private hospitals on stolen funds.
Some say don’t speak ill of the dead. But to silence truth is to bury the living alongside the corpse. What moral gymnastics does one perform to call this man a patriot? What ethical blindness is required to mourn him as a hero?
Let’s be clear: Buhari didn’t just neglect the East. He dismissed it. Reduced it to a “dot.” But as I once wrote – what a dot. The kind that anchors the end of every sentence. And the kind Nigeria will never be complete without. His contempt wasn’t careless. It was coded.
So no, I won’t romanticize this man. I won’t varnish a legacy soaked in sorrow. The ancients and all the ancestral spirits that guard justice – will not look kindly on those who whitewash tyranny.
And to anyone rushing to mourn him with flowers and praise? May you reap the harvest of the seeds he sowed. May your families feel what millions felt. May your fate tremble under the same instability he nurtured. Because sympathy for evil is complicity. And Buhari? He was not just flawed – he was a mission. A mission of erosion, masked as governance.
Let those who danced when his name left the ledger of the living be blessed. For they, perhaps, carry the truth more bravely than our books and our bulletins. And let this essay stand not as a tribute – but as a witness.
AN UNVARNISHED RECKONING – MUHAMMADU BUHARI THROUGH THE PRISM OF LIVED EXPERIENCE
COMBING THE DUST SERIES
By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma, AI-K
THE ELUSIVE LEGACY OF MUHAMMADU BUHARI: AN INTRODUCTION
The passing of Muhammadu Buhari on July 13, 2025, in London at age 82, has not simplified the task of defining his legacy. For many Nigerians and observers, Buhari remains an enigma – a figure whose life spanned military dictatorship and democratic rule, austere discipline and profound governance failures, unwavering personal integrity and systemic national decline. As one Lagos-based writer noted, “He inherited unprecedented goodwill and squandered it”. This paradox makes any attempt to distill his essence fraught with tension.
Buhari’s dual identities defy easy categorization. As a young major general, he seized power in 1983 through a military coup, launching the infamous “War Against Indiscipline” that saw citizens flogged for lateness and journalists jailed under Decree No. 4. Yet decades later, he reinvented himself as a “converted democrat,” winning the 2015 presidential election as an opposition candidate – a historic first in Nigeria – on promises to combat corruption and defeat Boko Haram. His personal reputation for austerity remained untarnished; he lived modestly, avoided self-enrichment, and championed anti-graft initiatives like the Single Treasury Account, which recovered billions in stolen assets.
Still, his leadership was shadowed by deep contradictions. The man who promised security presided over escalating violence: Boko Haram expanded its rural strongholds, ISWAP emerged, and kidnapping epidemics swept the northwest. The president who vowed economic revival left Nigeria with record debt (N77 trillion, up from N42 trillion), unprecedented inflation (22.4%), and deepening poverty (133 million multidimensionally poor). His administration’s repression of the #EndSARS protests – culminating in the Lekki Toll Gate massacre – and the Twitter ban revealed an authoritarian streak at odds with his democratic persona.
Perhaps this duality explains why Buhari defies monolithic definition. He was both the northern “talakawa’s” champion and the architect of lopsided appointments favoring northern elites. A leader who invested in infrastructure (rails, bridges, agriculture) yet failed to translate projects into broad prosperity. As Alexis Akwagyiram observed, history may remember him as a symbol of democratic change, but one whose transformative potential remained unfulfilled.
In this essay, we confront Buhari not as a static icon but as a mirror reflecting Nigeria’s own contradictions. His legacy – like the man himself – belongs to everybody and nobody, a cold blend of integrity and impunity, progress and regression, leaving a nation still grappling with the meaning of his tumultuous reign.
PERSONAL ENCOUNTER: FROM HOPE TO TERROR
My encounter with Muhammadu Buhari’s legacy began not in scholarly analysis, but in the palpable fear of an upper six school boy home for the Christmas holidays on December 31, 1983. The sight of soldiers barricading major arteries of the highway leading to our village in Abiriba was some scene for me, their faces impassive under the tropical sun, signaled the violent rupture of Nigeria’s fragile democracy. The radio proclaimed a “corrective regime” that promised to excise corruption and restore national dignity – rhetoric that initially intoxicated some Elders I recall and various of my mates, spurned yarns about what’s to come; many of course, with no way to know what coming, celebrated the coup against Shehu Shagari’s flawed administration.
This intoxication swiftly soured into terror. Schools shuttered indefinitely. The chilling silence of state-controlled radio replaced vibrant debate. Midnight knocks on dissidents’ doors became commonplace, while journalists like Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor faced imprisonment under Decree 4 for the crime of factual reporting. Citizens were flogged publicly for queue-jumping – a perverse theater where the prescribed cure of “discipline” proved deadlier than the societal disease it purported to treat.
On the ground, authoritarianism wasn’t just a policy – it became a daily performance of cruelty. I saw young soldiers, most of them simply boys, drunk on their newfound authority, ordering elderly men to crawl like infants across dusty roads, their dignity shredded. Stronger men, mistaken for defiant, were met with savage lashes of the koboko – beaten not for crimes but for hesitating, for misunderstanding, or only because the soldier wanted to assert dominance.
The absurdity of power reached grotesque extremes. I witnessed then a pregnant woman who hawked wares, who cried out in protest when a soldier failed to pay the agreed price for goods. For this ordinary grievance, she was brutalized in full view of the public – a macabre reminder that under tyranny, even truth-telling becomes subversive.
This early template of repression and broken promises became the defining pattern of Buhari’s influence, culminating decades later in a presidential tenure (2015 – 2023) that left Nigeria economically crippled, violently fractured, and institutionally hollowed. His recent death closes a biographical chapter, unleashing a wave of solemn tributes from global corridors of power. World leaders like Narendra Modi extolled his “wisdom, warmth and unwavering commitment” to India-Nigeria ties, while President Bola Tinubu declared a week of national mourning with flags at half-mast. Former ministers and international institutions consecrated him as an “incorruptible patriot” and “moral compass” – sanctimonious paeans that echo through marble halls while street vendors in Kano’s Kurmi Market hawk tomatoes beside radios broadcasting these eulogies, their hollow laughter punctuating the air. For Hadiza, a mother of three selling roasted plantains in Lagos’ Oshodi terminal, such platitudes are obscenities: “They praise his austerity while my children share one egg for breakfast. Let them come eat ‘discipline’ with us.” The bitter aftertaste of his failures lingers in the daily struggles of millions – still living with the scars of a governance philosophy that weaponized discipline and demanded submission, not justice.
THE CULTIVATED PERSONA VS. HARSH REALITIES
Buhari masterfully cultivated the persona of “Mai Gaskiya” – the truthful one – leveraging public asset declarations, a modest home in Daura, and plain garments as a calculated contrast to the opulence of Nigeria’s elite political class. This carefully constructed image now serves as the cornerstone of his official hagiography, even as market women in Onitsha’s Main Market recount how his prohibition on rice imports transformed their stalls into graveyards of unsold goods. “They call him frugal,” scoffs Emeka, a tricycle operator in Lagos, “while his nephews drove armored SUVs through our potholed streets.” His rhetoric, steeped in anti-corruption zeal and moral rectitude, resonated deeply in a country where trust in leadership had long been eroded.
When the coup broke, and Buhari’s name replaced Shagari’s on every radio bulletin, it felt like a reset. At FESAS Ogoja, a school teeming with a mix of the country’s racial and regional template, with bright young minds and warring dreams of a better future, we tried to interpret it as a return to principle-driven governance. Soldiers in pressed khaki constantly moved about town with promises of discipline, anti-corruption, national rebirth.
We wanted to believe. But belief faded quickly – trampled under the boots of reality.
Talks in the hostels veered from reform to resignation. Our idealism, once ablaze, dimmed into something darker. I remember standing by the school’s rear fence watching armed soldiers guard stockpiles of relief rice meant for displaced villagers nearby. And yet, families were visibly hungry. .
Roads around town and the major highways in and out of Ogoja, either from Abakiliki or from Ikom, remained impassable, swallowed by erosion and years of neglect. Names of phantom contractors floated from government notices, while locals grumbled about unfulfilled tenders and missing equipment. We learned early that Buhari’s iron-fisted rhetoric didn’t crack the code of corruption – it reinforced it under new uniforms.
The myth didn’t erode. It imploded.
And on campus, those who had spoken his name with hope – the history teachers, the pre law students, even the skeptical depart heads – began to lower their voices. Not out of danger. Out of disappointment. The promise had turned to posturing. And the man who came bearing the sword of virtue slowly became the symbol of a system built not on truth, but on intimidation.
In the end before he was overthrown during that first coming, Buhari’s tenure revealed that personal frugality does not equal political integrity. His image was a well-tailored mask – but governance exposed the cracks beneath. The man who claimed to embody truth presided over a government that buried it in obfuscation.
METAMORPHOSIS: FROM AUTOCRAT TO “CONVERTED DEMOCRAT”
Muhammadu Buhari’s path from a stern autocrat to a self-proclaimed democrat is one of the most striking metamorphoses in Nigerian political history. His first foray into power was blunt and forceful: a 1983 coup that ousted the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. Buhari’s military regime quickly earned notoriety for its rigid discipline and repressive policies. The War Against Indiscipline became synonymous with public floggings, mass arrests, and decrees that left no room for dissent. Critics were jailed, journalists silenced, and even famed musician Fela Kuti wasn’t spared. The regime’s reach extended beyond borders – most infamously with the botched attempt to kidnap Umaru Dikko in London, a failed cloak-and-dagger operation that embarrassed Nigeria on the global stage.
But after his ouster in 1985, Buhari largely faded into the background until resurfacing in the late ’90s and early 2000s, notably as chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund. There, he projected an image of personal austerity and administrative efficiency. This period became the scaffold for his political rebranding. Gone was the iron-fisted general; in his place emerged a man who carefully cultivated the persona of Mai Gaskiya – retaining this symbolic title as a cornerstone of his revived identity. His ascetic lifestyle, unpretentious residence in Katsina, and declarations of public assets painted him as a moral foil to Nigeria’s extravagant elite.
Between 2003 and 2011, Buhari contested three presidential elections unsuccessfully, refining his rhetoric with each attempt. In London’s Chatham House in 2015, he performed the ultimate political pivot – declaring himself a “converted democrat” who had learned from his past and was committed to upholding the rule of law, electoral integrity, and democratic values. He positioned his past as a lesson, not a liability, and for a citizenry fatigued by corruption and insecurity, this redemption arc felt plausible.
It was not just a message – it was a movement. Buhari played a key role in creating the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), which eventually merged with other opposition parties to form the All Progressives Congress (APC). This alliance gave him the necessary political heft, and in 2015, he achieved what no Nigerian opposition candidate had before: defeating an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, in a general election.
It was hailed as a watershed moment in Nigerian democracy. Buhari’s rise seemed to symbolize national maturity – a former dictator transformed into a custodian of civilian governance. Yet the realities of his presidency soon invited skepticism, and the myth of redemption began to wear thin. Still, the transformation he orchestrated – from a ruler feared for his decrees to a leader embraced for his promise – remains a testament to how narrative, timing, and political savvy can reshape even the most rigid of reputations.
THE GREAT UNRAVELING: NEPOTISM, CORRUPTION, AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Muhammadu Buhari’s ascent to Nigeria’s presidency in 2015 was heralded as the triumph of a “converted democrat,” a former military ruler promising redemption. His resonant inaugural pledge – “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” – ignited hopes for a unifying force transcending Nigeria’s deep regional and religious divides. Yet within weeks, this lofty symbolism collided with the unerring nepotism that defined his career trajectory – bullet, ballot and beyond. Key appointments disproportionately favored his northern political base: 33 of 37 security agency chiefs hailed from the Muslim North, while ministers from his Fulani ethnic circle accumulated portfolios despite active corruption probes. Former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke faced Interpol manhunts while Abba Kyari – Buhari’s Chief of Staff implicated in MTN bribery scandals – remained untouchable. Northern street wisdom distilled this hypocrisy into a lethal proverb: “Buhari’s broom sweeps only southward.” This wasn’t perceived as mere imbalance; it was widely interpreted as systemic state capture by a narrow clique, igniting accusations of entrenched nepotism and deepening the very fissures his victory had momentarily bridged. The chasm between unifying rhetoric and exclusionary practice became the first crack in his administration’s foundation, fundamentally eroding national cohesion and trust.
The anti-corruption crusade, Buhari’s defining raison d’être and the core source of his initial moral authority, soon faced its own crisis of credibility. While the administration secured notable high-profile convictions and recovered stolen assets, a damning pattern of selectivity undermined its legitimacy. Opposition figures often faced relentless, public pursuit, while politically connected individuals within the ruling circle or northern establishment frequently enjoyed impunity or curiously delayed scrutiny. The case of Ahmed Idris became emblematic of this institutional rot: retained beyond retirement age as Accountant-General of the Federation, he was later arrested for embezzling over ₦100 billion – a scandal raising fundamental questions about oversight and vetting within Buhari’s inner sanctum. Even more corrosive to the presidency’s integrity claims was the alleged 6.2 million Central Bank forgery scandal, where a document bearing what appeared to be Buhari’s signature authorized a suspicious withdrawal. These episodes transformed the anti-corruption drive from a national mission into a perceived weapon of political consolidation, devastating its moral standing. Economically, Buhari inherited significant challenges but presided over their dramatic deterioration. His policy approach often seemed anchored in 1980s-style control mechanisms, increasingly out of step with 21st-century complexities. The same man lauded in eulogies for his “austerity” oversaw an oil sector hemorrhaging 4 billion annually to thieves – including the surreal discovery of a 4km illegal pipeline siphoning crude undetected for nine years. His social-investment programs became cannibalized patronage networks: N-Power coordinators in Adamawa drove Range Rovers while beneficiaries starved. The 2019 decision to close land borders, intended to spur domestic agriculture, backfired catastrophically, triggering acute food inflation and shortages that disproportionately punished the poor. The artificial pegging of the naira to the dollar created a crippling parallel market, starved businesses of essential forex, and fueled rampant inflation; its eventual, chaotic collapse inflicted further economic shock.
The true social shockwave from fuel subsidy removal stemmed less from the act itself than from the blatant hypocrisy surrounding its politically motivated delay. Despite President Buhari and his spokesmen (Adesina, Shehu) openly conceding the subsidy’s fiscal unsustainability, they opted to maintain it until the very end of his administration. Public justifications centered on shielding the vulnerable, framing Buhari as a “friend of the masses.” However, this paternalistic narrative masked the raw political truth: as Buhari conceded, removing the subsidy earlier would have been an electoral “suicide mission” for the APC in 2023.
This strategic deferral laid bare a governance contradiction: Buhari championed economic reform rhetorically while practicing political preservation. The inevitable, complex task of removal – requiring robust compensatory mechanisms – was offloaded onto his successor. The succeeding administration was forced to act without the preparatory groundwork and social safety nets Buhari had ample time to establish. The predictable consequence? An economic shock significantly amplified by this lack of preparation, manifesting in surging poverty, inflation, and public outrage.
Compounding this failure, the episode unfolded against Buhari’s broader economic legacy: two recessions and historic unemployment levels. These factors systematically eroded national potential and crushed public hope. For millions of Nigerians, particularly the youth, these weren’t distant figures but daily hardships. The subsidy delay became a stark symbol of him emblematic self.
THE CORE BETRAYAL: SYSTEMIC KLEPTOCRACY AND ECONOMIC RUIN
Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency ultimately crystallizes as the catastrophic mismanagement of a nation’s desperate hope. Inheriting unprecedented goodwill and a mandate for renewal, his tenure instead etched its legacy in the calcification of poverty, the metastasis of insecurity, the poisoning of ethno-regional relations, and the deliberate hollowing of institutions. His defining anti-corruption crusade imploded under the weight of brazen selectivity, while the proclaimed “converted democrat” governed through an inner-circle cabal, actively fueling the very inequalities he vowed to dismantle. As one commentator starkly summarized, the outcome was “squandered goodwill, deepening inequality, and a nation left salvaging ruins.” This transcends political failure; it is a collective national trauma – the anguish of a betrayed promise.
This betrayal unfolded not as a sudden collapse, but as the slow, inevitable erosion of a carefully constructed myth. The foundations of decay were laid early: his military regime’s “War Against Indiscipline” served as brutal theatre, masking systemic rot while he, as Petroleum Minister (1976–1978), presided over opaque dealings that normalized the secrecy later defining his rule. Even then, his economic interventions foreshadowed chaos, like the disastrous 1984 naira recoloring – a blunt-force trauma to the economy leaving citizens stranded and bewildered, a grim preview of monetary crises to come.
His civilian presidency (2015–2023), however, unleashed the full, toxic bloom of institutionalized kleptocracy. The “Mai Gaskiya” façade crumbled irreparably as high-profile opposition figures faced relentless prosecution, while politically connected allies embroiled in multi-billion naira scandals were seamlessly absorbed into the government apparatus. The perverse reality became undeniable: joining the ruling party often meant legal immunity. This wasn’t perception; it was operational doctrine – justice meticulously calibrated to power.
The most profound violation occurred where he wielded direct control: the oil sector. As substantive Petroleum Minister, Buhari presided over an industrial-scale haemorrhage of national wealth. Billions vanished annually through orchestrated theft, exemplified not by the previously mentioned pipeline, but by the scandal surrounding the multi-billion dollar AKK gas pipeline project. Despite massive allocations and Buhari’s personal inaugurations of construction phases, progress stalled amidst allegations of inflated contracts and diverted funds – a white elephant symbolizing the looting of strategic national assets under his direct supervision. Simultaneously, the state oil company, NNPC, became a black box, failing spectacularly to remit colossal oil revenues owed to the national treasury, with investigations vanishing into bureaucratic voids.
Social intervention programs, touted as poverty lifelines, mutated into predatory patronage systems. Initiatives like the school feeding scheme and N-Power saw billions evaporate, while intended beneficiaries starved. The Anchor Borrowers’ Programme epitomized this perversion: designed as an agricultural lifeline, it devolved into a slush fund for elites, disbursing phantom loans to cronies while genuine farmers faced crippling debt and ruinous crop failures without support.
By 2023, the veneer had vaporized. Transparency International ranked Nigeria 154th in corruption – worse than the very administrations Buhari had demonized. His personal frugality, once a beacon, was now starkly revealed as a fig leaf for a rapacious ruling class. The lesson was brutal: individual asceticism offers zero protection against systemic rot.
The economic catastrophe mirrored this moral bankruptcy. Buhari’s archaic, control-based economic dogma proved catastrophically mismatched to 21st-century realities. Policies like the prolonged border closure (2019–2022), intended to boost local production, instead strangled cross-border economies vital to millions, enriching smuggling syndicates while triggering food scarcity hyperinflation. His administration’s stubborn retention of the petrol subsidy – a known fiscal time bomb costing billions monthly – exemplified a dangerous inertia, deliberately offloading the inevitable explosive removal onto his successor without laying essential compensatory groundwork.
The 2022 currency redesign became a nightmarish reprise of his 1980s rigidity, executed with breathtaking incompetence. The chaotic rollout wasn’t merely disruptive; it was lethal. Nationwide, citizens faced bank siege warfare: interminable queues, ATM graveyards, and collapsing pensioners. The human cost was etched in stories like that of a pregnant woman in Port Harcourt who miscarried after days stranded in a banking hall crush – a tragedy underscoring how policy brutality shattered lives. It was economic sadism disguised as reform.
The financial toll was staggering: national debt exploding from 60 billion to 150 billion, much financing white-elephant projects like the vulnerable Lagos-Ibadan rail corridor, rendered perilous by bandits. Youth unemployment reached an unthinkable 53%. Inflation raged. The naira imploded. Over 133 million Nigerians sank into multidimensional poverty – the crushing arithmetic of failure.
This unraveling manifested beyond statistics. It was the silent despair in markets where stalls stood empty, the crumbling walls of underfunded schools, the hollow eyes of pensioners awaiting vanished stipends. The man who pledged national redemption departed, leaving a populace gasping for survival beneath the weight of his broken promises.
SECURITY FAILURES AND AUTHORITARIAN REFLEXES
Security, the other pillar of Buhari’s appeal bolstered by his military pedigree, deteriorated alarmingly. His early 2015 declaration of Boko Haram’s “technical defeat” proved tragically premature. The insurgency not only persisted but metastasized, while banditry and kidnapping exploded into industrial-scale enterprises across the northwest and central regions, and separatist tensions flared in the southeast. His early condemnations of Goodluck Jonathan’s “weakness” now echo as cruel irony: under Buhari, bandits annexed entire local governments in Zamfara, kidnapped Abuja-Kaduna train passengers in broad daylight, and established parallel taxation systems – transforming Nigeria’s heartland into a dystopian marketplace of terror. Large swathes of territory effectively slipped beyond state control, signifying a severe crisis of sovereignty. The October 2020 #EndSARS protests crystallized the nation’s deep-seated frustrations – a youth-led uprising against not just police brutality, but systemic governance failure and economic despair. Buhari’s initial concession, disbanding the notorious SARS unit, was instantly negated by the military’s lethal assault on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate, where rights groups documented at least 12 killings. His subsequent national address, refusing to acknowledge the massacre and branding protesters “rioters,” exposed a perilous disconnect and authoritarian reflex, permanently scarring his relationship with a generation and marking a defining moment of state violence.
Compounding these governance failures were Buhari’s personal missteps and symbolic stumbles, which further eroded his image. The 2016 plagiarism of Barack Obama’s victory speech was more than an embarrassment; it signaled carelessness and undermined trust in his message. His infamous remark to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that his wife “belongs in the kitchen, the living room, and the other room,” coupled with his dismissal of Nigerian youth as “lazy” (igniting the viral #LazyNigerianYouths backlash), weren’t just gaffes. They revealed an ossified, patriarchal worldview glaringly at odds with contemporary Nigerian society, sparking justified outrage. Most potent, however, were his prolonged medical absences in London. Beyond fueling bizarre rumors, they created a tangible leadership vacuum, paralyzing governance and becoming a painful national metaphor for a country itself perceived as ailing, absent, and adrift.
SECURITY PROMISES BROKEN AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS
Buhari’s core electoral promise – leveraging his military credentials to defeat Boko Haram – met a similar fate of catastrophic failure, transforming insecurity into hydra-headed chaos. Despite early territorial gains, Boko Haram factions, including ISIS-West Africa, retained lethal potency, overrunning military bases. The Chibok girls’ tragedy (2014), which helped propel him to power, was eclipsed under his watch: 1,500 students were kidnapped between 2020–2021 alone. Security forces, underfunded and demoralized, committed atrocities like the 2015 Zaria massacre of 347 Shia Muslims, buried in mass graves. His greatest security failure, however, was the transformation of farmer-herder clashes into industrialized banditry. Northwest Nigeria descended into a nightmare where motorcycle-riding militias kidnapped schoolchildren en masse, pillaged villages, and imposed illegal taxes – a crisis killing over 10,000 and displacing millions. Buhari, himself Fulani, faced widespread accusations of ethnic bias for failing to decisively rein in kinsmen, while his “grazing reserves” proposal inflamed southern governors who perceived it as state-sanctioned land grabs. His military mindset inevitably birthed repression. Soldiers slaughtered demonstrators at Lekki in 2020; separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu was renditioned from Kenya in defiance of domestic and international law; Twitter was banned for hosting dissent. For my family in Kaduna, nights became punctuated by gunfire symphonies – a grim soundtrack to the shattered promise of security. This was not reform; it was the 1983 playbook reloaded: governance by fear, not law or consensus.
Understanding this trajectory requires examining the psychological scaffolding of Buhari’s leadership. His worldview, forged in colonial-era boarding schools where corporal punishment was routine and British military academies prizing obedience over critical thought, cemented destructive tenets. Hierarchy became virtue, manifesting in humiliating “frog jump” punishments for tardy civil servants, reducing citizenship to mere compliance. Complexity was an enemy; despite overseeing Nigeria’s oil boom as Petroleum Minister in the 70s, he displayed no grasp of economic diversification, dooming policies from 1985 currency reforms to 2019 border closures. Dissent was pathological, leading to Fela Kuti’s imprisonment on spurious charges in 1984 – a precursor to the 2020 Twitter ban. This ingrained psychology ensured Buhari the “democrat” remained fundamentally Buhari the general. He appointed northern Muslims to 97% of top security posts, dismissed the Lekki massacre as “mischief,” and ruled through opaque body language rather than transparent policy. His extended medical absences – over five months in London during 2017 alone – epitomized a significantdisconnect. While he received world-class care abroad, Nigerian hospitals lacked basic paracetamol. The darkly comic “body double” rumors circulating in 2017 symbolized a leadership so physically and morally absent, citizens questioned its very existence. His deathbed plea for pardon rings hollow for the mothers of #EndSARS victims still seeking justice, and for a generation raised under the shadow of his failures.
THE CYCLE CLOSES
Muhammadu Buhari’s life stands as a mirror to Nigeria’s contradictions: a nation drowning in oil wealth yet pauperized by greed; rich in ethnic diversity yet fractured by nepotism; yearning for order yet consumed by self-inflicted chaos. As global eulogies laud his “patriotism,” traders in reported Markets across the country, burn copies of newspapers carrying his obituaries. While dignitaries gather in Abuja’s National Mosque for his funeral rites, farmers in Benue count fresh graves from herdsmen attacks. This chasm between elite canonization and mass trauma forces the essential reckoning: Was he the “moral compass” extolled by statesmen, or the tribalist who weaponized identity to entrench a narrow elite? Can history forgive a leader whose finest hour was piously declaiming “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” while governing exclusively for a singular ethno-religious clique?
My journey – from the frightened schoolboy of 1983 to the disillusioned observer of 2025 – crystallizes three irreducible truths his legacy imparts.
First, personal probity is no substitute for systemic integrity; his famed austerity masked a corrosive tolerance for kleptocracy that normalized grand theft as statecraft.
Second, military mindsets are fundamentally incompatible with democratic building; his belief in coercion over consensus accelerated national unraveling.
Third, true legacy is measured in human dignity; the 133 million Nigerians condemned to multidimensional poverty irrevocably outweigh any concrete infrastructure project or rhetorical flourish.
As Africa confronts a resurgent wave of military coups, Buhari’s story serves as a vital caution: soldiers who exchange khaki for agbada still carry the DNA of dictatorship. Nigeria’s path to healing demands an unflinching confrontation with his contradictions – not their canonization. The arduous work of national redemption begins precisely where his era ended: amidst the ruins of promises unkept, the unmarked graves of the forgotten, and the fragile, resilient hope of those who still dare to believe this wounded land can be salvaged.
When one surveys the arc of Muhammadu Buhari’s public life, a sense of circularity becomes inescapable – an odyssey that began with dramatic force and concluded in a quiet unraveling. It is difficult not to feel, as I do, that the promise of transformation gradually gave way to a disheartening familiarity.
I often recall the image of that youthful, steel-eyed soldier who emerged in 1983, imposing order with a military fist. He represented himself as Nigeria’s righteous scourge against decay – disciplined, untainted, and unwilling to accommodate the rot that had seeped into the nation’s institutions. His “War Against Indiscipline” wasn’t just a slogan – it was enforced quite literally, through corporal punishment and imprisonment, even of journalists. At the time, there was something fearsome but oddly reassuring about such resolve.
From the very start, I stood firm in my rejection of any Buhari government. It didn’t matter how they repackaged him – new suit, polished speeches, PR miracles – I wasn’t buying it. I warned anyone willing to listen, and even those who weren’t. My grandmother used to say, with the kind of clarity that slices through illusions: “A leopard never changes its spots, and no matter how much you scrub a pig, it will always go back to the mud.” That wasn’t folklore – it was prophecy. Buhari wasn’t some misunderstood statesman awaiting redemption. He was who he had always been. And I never – never – believed his presidency would be anything other than a continuation of the same tired script.
Then came 2015, and with it, the whirlwind. The air buzzed with a dangerous cocktail of hope and delusion. That same man – once feared, now somehow celebrated – rolled out his tenure like a messiah of democracy. “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” he declared, cloaked in borrowed poetry. Nigerians, desperate for change, suspended disbelief and reached for the illusion. But I didn’t waver. I watched the frenzy, unmoved. The past hadn’t been erased – it had been repackaged and sold back to us in glossy wrappers. While the nation leaned in, I stood my ground. Because the truth is, some masks don’t hide – they reveal. And I saw right through his.
But the test of leadership is not in slogans; it is in silence amid suffering. In 2020, as the #EndSARS protests erupted, it was our youth – the very cohort Buhari had pledged to champion – who bore the brunt of a broken system. What followed at Lekki Toll Gate is etched in painful memory. As the tragedy unfolded and demands for justice rose, Buhari’s absence was glaring. When he finally spoke, his tone struck me as curiously sterile, devoid of empathy. The mask he had so carefully worn in 2015 faltered. He no longer seemed to belong to “everybody,” and the people in anguish could find no trace of the man they had once dared to trust.
The downward spiral continued into 2023. The currency swap policy triggered upheaval across the country – a haunting echo of the 1984 episode, only more chaotic, more injurious. Elderly Nigerians, after decades of toil, found themselves collapsed in queues. Informal markets – the backbone of survival for millions – stood paralyzed. I watched this unfold and could not help but sense déjà vu, only this time magnified by deeper consequences. Buhari, yet again, was removed from the scene, disengaged at a moment when clarity and presence were most needed. It was not just the revisiting of old policy missteps; it was their amplification under the weight of time and disillusionment.
If we were to distill his legacy into a few key images, they would tell an unflattering but instructive tale. The soldier of 1983, the reformer of 2015, the absentee in 2020, the echo chamber of 2023 – each phase marked by intensifying distance from the citizenry. He arrived armed with the promise of restoration, but when the moment demanded compassion and courage, he receded. It wasn’t transformation he ushered in, but repetition – an entrapment in old cycles dressed in the garb of change.
The questions he once declared himself ready to answer now persist, heavier for having been neglected. That, to me, is the closing note of this cycle – not just the story of one man’s presidency, but of a nation still waiting.
BUHARI IN HIS OWN WORDS
WORDS THAT UNMASK – BUHARI IN HIS OWN VOICE
Leadership isn’t just about policies; it’s about posture. And if you listen closely, you’ll find that the most honest leaders aren’t those behind the podium, but those who speak unscripted – those whose words, often dismissed as slips, are actually windows into their worldview.
In Muhammadu Buhari’s case, his quotes were rarely mistaken. They were deliberate. They were revelations. And for those of us who watched, lived, and lost under his regime, they were chapters in a longer book we didn’t ask to read.
– Inaugural speech, 2015
This sounded noble on day one, but it quickly soured. From where I stood, it was a slogan drenched in ambiguity. If Buhari belonged to nobody, then perhaps he felt no urgency to answer to the suffering of everybody – especially the youth who clung to hope. He became an absentee president, governing not with presence, but with detachment.
2. “If we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.”
– 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit
I remember hearing this and thinking: finally, a man with conviction. But the conviction was skin-deep. Under his very nose, corruption metastasized. It was not just the number of scandals – it was their scale and the brazenness. The phrase became a cruel irony, as Nigerians lost faith while corruption danced unrestrained.
3. “Nigerian youths want to sit and do nothing.”
– London, 2018
This one hit me in the gut. My children, my students, my neighbors – they all hustle endlessly. In traffic. In tech. In textile. How dare he dismiss a generation built on sweat and scrap? His words weren’t just wrong; they were corrosive. They betrayed a deep misunderstanding of who we are and what we fight for daily.
4. “IPOB is just like a dot in a circle.”
– Arise TV interview, 2021
This one stung differently. I’ve weathered my share of tone-deaf proclamations from Nigeria’s power class, but this felt like a direct slap – not just to logic, but to identity. Among Ndigbo, this quote stirred deep currents. I remember writing in my diary: “Yes, we are a dot. But what a dot. No sentence is complete without a dot. Nigeria will never fully become until the dot is placed right – respectfully, purposefully.”
Whether Buhari meant it as a joke or a policy signal, it was laced with insensitivity. He didn’t misspeak; he spoke from a place of entrenched disregard. That circle he spoke of? It was his echo chamber – one where nuance, history, and the dignity of others are systematically drowned. His statement wasn’t just ignorant. It was dangerous in its reduction, revealing a man whose idea of unity meant erasure. This quote also brought back echoes of his military years – when dissent was suppressed and regional complexities oversimplified. To reduce a movement rooted in real grievances to a mere “dot” betrayed a dangerous unwillingness to listen. Nigeria isn’t made of dots – it’s made of people, pain, and a patchwork of longing.
5. “Many of those misbehaving today… will be treated in the language they understand.”
– Deleted Twitter post, 2021
I read this with chills. The language of force. The language of threat. Just like in 1983, when neighbors vanished under Decree 2, now tweets replaced tanks – but the message was the same. It reminded me that power, when unchecked, often speaks with fists instead of empathy.
6. “My wife belongs to my kitchen, my living room, and the other room.”
– Press conference, Germany, 2016
This wasn’t just a joke gone bad. It was a glimpse into an entrenched worldview – a refusal to recognize women beyond their domestic roles. It offended not only my wife and daughter, but my sense of progress. Leaders should inspire evolution, not entrench limitation.
7. “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement.”
– Seminar, 2001
This wasn’t a slip of tongue – it was Buhari without the benefit of stage management. No spin. No softening. Just the man, speaking from his core. In that moment, I saw not a national leader but a religious absolutist – a man who viewed pluralism as dilution, and governance through one lens only. His commitment wasn’t to unity – it was to ideology. And for Nigerians outside his worldview, especially those from the south or minority faiths, this statement felt like a dismissal, if not a warning. In this quote, he was exposed in his truest element: one who ruled not for all, but for those who mirrored him. This statement always stirred unease. Nigeria is a mixture of faiths, of secular hopes, of pluralistic promises. Such overt commitment cast shadows on his impartiality. As someone who values fairness, this felt like a betrayal of the inclusive nation I dream and hope for.
8. “A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill health.”
– Poland, 2018
For once, his vulnerability showed. But even here, I sensed self-pity over self-awareness. He never truly addressed the long absences, the public confusion, or the uncertainty he left behind. A leader who disappears leaves behind not sympathy – but instability.
9. “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015… the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
– Pre-election remark
Many chalked this up as hyperbole. I didn’t. I heard it for what it was: the language of a man who sees violence as a lever, not a last resort. Buhari wasn’t posturing here – he was revealing. This wasn’t a politician threatening chaos – it was a general relapsing into muscle memory. His words echoed back to 1983, where dissent met detention, and governance meant curfew. Nigeria under him became a place where force was favored over dialogue, and where Fulani terrorists found sanctuary in ambiguity and silence. It was no accident – it was alignment. This was not passion – it was provocation. It reminded me of the curfews and terror of 1983. A man who truly believes in democracy doesn’t reach for metaphors of violence. This painted him less as a statesman, more as a soldier unwilling to lay down his arms.
10. “As I retire home to Daura… I feel fulfilled that we have started the Nigerian rebirth.”
– Farewell speech, 2023
A rebirth? Perhaps. But it felt more like a coma. Infrastructure sprouted, yes, but integrity wilted. I didn’t feel reborn – I felt aged by the battles fought in silence, the hopes deferred, the speeches that rang hollow. He may rest fulfilled, but the rest of us are still struggling to rise.
WHY THESE WORDS MATTER: Each of these quotes peeled back the performance and gave us a peek into the operating system beneath. They weren’t just verbal misfires; they were ideological road signs. And for those of us who’ve known his regime from classroom curfews to digital censorship, these words are memorials to what we endured.
They unmask Buhari not as the accidental autocrat, but the intentional one. The man who governed from instinct, not introspection. Who believed loudness could replace listening, and whose legacy, stitched with such words, reminds us that language – especially from leaders – is never neutral.
A CONVERSATION WITH MY OWN HISTORY
They say time softens judgment. I disagree. Time only deepens clarity. And with Buhari, clarity came not through analysis – but through the words that escaped his own lips.
He said, “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement.”
There was no pause. No nuance. Just raw belief, laid bare. That wasn’t stagecraft – it was creed. He didn’t slip. He didn’t stutter. That was the real Buhari speaking: the soldier of ideology, not of nationhood. The man who saw difference as dilution, who wore bias like a badge and never truly believed in the messy, beautiful complexity of Nigeria.
He said, “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015… the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
And we all flinched. I remember that quote not as political theater, but as a confession. The instinctive reach for violence, the simmering threat beneath the agbada. He wasn’t joking. He was revealing – showing us the muscle-memory of a regime that had never truly left him. And for me, that was the moment I stopped expecting evolution.
When he dismissed IPOB as “just like a dot in a circle,” I knew this wasn’t just another government ignoring grievances. This was erasure masked as wit. But we, the dot, remain. And I wrote then – “No sentence is complete without a dot.” Nigeria will never find its rhythm without reckoning with those it keeps trying to write off.
Even in his silence, Buhari spoke. In delayed speeches. In absence. In indifference. And in every policy that shouted order but whispered neglect.
So, as he exits history’s stage, I am left not with fanfare but with fragments – quotes, echoes, indignities. His legacy won’t be sculpted by statues or sanitized essays. It will live in the lived experiences of people like me, who watched, who hoped, who hurt. And who remember.
FINAL WORDS: THE RECKONING
So here I am, rounding off this long walk through memory and indignation. It wasn’t supposed to end in fire, but how else do you mark the departure of a man whose tenure was forged in it?
Buhari. A name that once meant steel, then silence, then suffering. His story, etched across headlines and hagiographies, is already being rewritten in certain circles – with polished boots and British condolences, men in tailored Agbada and suits flying to the UK to weep beside the family of the fallen. But in the streets? In the places where policy wasn’t paper but pain – his name sparks jubilation, not mourning. People celebrate, not out of hatred, but relief.
The truth is simple. This wasn’t a misunderstood man. Buhari was never the reluctant dictator. He spoke clearly. His policies marched confidently. And his intentions never stuttered. He belonged to Sharia, not to the secular nation. He praised violent extremists while punishing peaceful protesters. And he closed the South only to fling open the North like an unguarded gate. That wasn’t oversight. It was orchestration.
A rebirth? What a hollow echo. He spoke of renewal from his opulent refuge in London – courtesy of public coffers pillaged under the guise of combating graft – while the very people he claimed to resurrect couldn’t even find a doctor in a makeshift clinic.
Under his watch, IDP camps in Katsina sprouted like weeds in abandoned fields, each tent a monument to broken promises. Churches went up in smoke, villages disappeared off the map, and soldiers who dared to stand against Fulani militias found themselves dismissed or thrown into detention rather than honored for their courage. Then, in the same breath, those militants – the architects of terror – were pardoned, retrained, and folded back into the state apparatus as if their bloodied hands merited applause.
Ask the widows who mourn beneath tattered cloth. Ask the displaced who wake to the roar of engines that bring no aid. Ask the pastors whose churches lie in ash, their congregations scattered like embers. These are the citizens who never saw the “rebirth” he trumpeted – only the coma of a nation robbed of its dignity, its security, its very soul, while its leader healed in private hospitals on stolen funds.
Some say don’t speak ill of the dead. But to silence truth is to bury the living alongside the corpse. What moral gymnastics does one perform to call this man a patriot? What ethical blindness is required to mourn him as a hero?
Let’s be clear: Buhari didn’t just neglect the East. He dismissed it. Reduced it to a “dot.” But as I once wrote – what a dot. The kind that anchors the end of every sentence. And the kind Nigeria will never be complete without. His contempt wasn’t careless. It was coded.
So no, I won’t romanticize this man. I won’t varnish a legacy soaked in sorrow. The ancients and all the ancestral spirits that guard justice – will not look kindly on those who whitewash tyranny.
And to anyone rushing to mourn him with flowers and praise? May you reap the harvest of the seeds he sowed. May your families feel what millions felt. May your fate tremble under the same instability he nurtured. Because sympathy for evil is complicity. And Buhari? He was not just flawed – he was a mission. A mission of erosion, masked as governance.
Let those who danced when his name left the ledger of the living be blessed. For they, perhaps, carry the truth more bravely than our books and our bulletins. And let this essay stand not as a tribute – but as a witness.
A witness to the man.
To the mind.
To the misery.
And finally, to the end.
©️AI-KO
July 2025
iagbeze@gmail.com
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