Former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari died in London at the age of 82 on Sunday, following what the office of current President Bola Tinubu described as a “prolonged illness.”
Buhari first rose to power by overthrowing President Shehu Shagari in a military coup in December 1983. Buhari was a major general and chief of staff for the Nigerian army at the time.
Shagari had taken office as the first civilian leader of a system modeled on the U.S. Constitution, including a bicameral legislature and a dash of federalism for Nigeria’s 19 states. The system was supposed to insulate Nigeria from military rule. It worked for roughly four years.
Buhari ruled as a strongman who sought to impose “discipline” on his unruly nation and its corrupt political elite. When Nigerian civilians became restless and unruly while standing in long lines for public transportation, Buhari sent soldiers into the streets to literally whip them into shape. Government employees were forced to perform tough military calisthenics if they showed up late for work. The death penalty was imposed for more crimes, all the way down to counterfeiting.
When Buhari became convinced in 1984 that a former Shagari official named Umaru Dikko was guilty of embezzling funds, he dispatched a team to grab Dikko outside of his London home, wrap him in chains, nail him into a shipping crate, and ship him back to Nigeria. The plan failed because a British customs officer insisted on looking inside the crate, prompting a hilariously awkward scene involving British police, Nigerian diplomats, a forklift operator, and the Israeli doctor stuffed in the crate with Dikko to make sure he got home alive.
FileKing Charles III holds an audience with the President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari at Buckingham Palace on November 9, 2022, in London, England. (Photo by Stefan Rousseau-Pool/Getty Images)
“Mr. Buhari can be a severe man. His resolve, puritanical streak and iron will are renowned,” Nigerian historian Max Siollun remarked to the New York Times in 2015.
“He inherited unprecedented goodwill and squandered it. His legacy is one of missed opportunities, deepening inequality and a country left to pick up the pieces,” Lagos-based writer Olive Chiemerie told the Associated Press on Sunday.
Buhari was deposed in another coup two years later, Nigeria’s sixth since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. The other military leaders who overthrew him felt he had not done enough to fight corruption and revive the flagging economy. Buhari’s replacement was another major general, Ibrahim Babangida, who was regarded as a national hero for preventing yet another coup in 1975.
Babangida remained in power until 1993, when he decided to hold an election, but he did not like the outcome, so he annulled it. A massive public uprising convinced him to step down from his dictatorial post, transferring power to an interim government.
Buhari attempted to return to power four times when Nigeria began holding civilian elections again, finally succeeding in 2015. He made history as the first opposition candidate to ever win a free and fair election.
Even by the woeful standards of Nigerian leadership, Buhari’s presidency was a disaster. He dithered for six months before naming a candidate, even though the economy was in crisis, earning the derogatory nickname “Baba Go Slow.” Nigeria soon plunged into its first official recession of the new century.
File/General Muhammadu Buhari, dictator of Nigeria, following a successful coup d’etat against Shehu Shagari. (William Campbell/Sygma via Getty)
Buhari ran as a tough corruption fighter, which was also how he presented himself when he violently seized power from Shagari in 1983. Corruption remained a persistent problem on his watch.
Buhari’s economic policies were so dire that when he left office, the enduring symbol of his administration was a bag of rice – a staple food that more than doubled in price during his tenure. Buhari constantly promised to make rice cheaper, but never delivered.
Most disappointingly of all, Buhari won the votes of Nigerians who thought the former military strongman would crack down on insurgents and jihadis like Boko Haram, but terrorism, factional violence, and the persecution of Christians grew worse than ever on his watch.
The BBC eulogized Buhari as “aloof and austere,” praising him for retaining a “reputation for personal honesty” amid a cesspool of corruption – but blasting him for leaving so many religious and ethnic wounds open:
While campaigning he had promised to defeat the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. But the group remains a threat and one of its factions is now affiliated to the so-called Islamic State group.
There was also an upsurge in deadly clashes between farmers and ethnic Fulani herders in central Nigeria. Mr Buhari, a Fulani, was accused of not being tough enough on the herders or doing enough to stop the crisis.
The activities of so-called bandits in the north-western part of the country saw the abduction of hundreds of secondary school students.
When Buhari visited the White House in 2018, President Donald Trump bluntly asked him: “Why are you killing Christians in Nigeria?”
Christian groups complained that Buhari minimized the religious dimensions of the persecution, describing the Fulani as vandals or bandits, rather than jihadis bent on Islamicizing southern Nigeria by eliminating the Christian villagers.
“They want to strike Christians, and the government does nothing to stop them, because President Buhari is also of the Fulani ethnic group,” Bishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Lafia said in 2018.
Another ugly landmark of Buhari’s administration was the massacre of hundreds of Shiite Muslims by the Nigerian army in December 2015. Most Nigerian Muslims, like Buhari, are Sunnis. The incident is officially called the “Zaria Massacre,” after the city in northern Nigeria where it took place, but many refer to it as the “Buhari Massacre.”
In October 2020, a massive youth protest movement appeared in response to Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit accused of extrajudicial killings and torture. Buhari disbanded the unit, but when the protesters demanded additional reforms, Buhari denounced the EndSARS demonstrators as “rioters” who were “undermining national security” and sent in the troops. Dozens of civilians were killed when they opened fire.
