General Muhammadu Buhari lived a good life despite the struggles, the set-backs and the triumphs that attended his career. When he died on July 13, he richly deserved the eulogies that attended his passing.
He also became the second Nigerian President to die abroad, joining his kinsman, President Umar Musa Yar’Adua who died in 2010. He was also a lucky man who walked through fire and brimstone and yet survived with limited scars.
He was the first person to defeat an incumbent democratically elected President at a General Election. His followers were not just ordinary folks.
They were believers who worshipped Buhari because they were convinced that he was the prophet of our possibilities. He was lucky that he was able to have at his disposal, the skills and resources of strong and influential people who collaborated with him to create the All Progressives Congress, APC, which propelled him to power.
Buhari was an unusual power-player. His followers were the talakawas who believed he could work magic. They did not know how to get him to power and yet, defeat after defeat at the polls, they continued to follow him. After the historic 2015 elections when he succeeded in sending President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan into retirement, he too was to discover that change comes slowly. With meticulous husbandry, he tackled Nigeria’s problems. Confronted with the rot in the nation’s military, he initiated the trial of the former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sabo Dasuki, and several generals.
Despite his political triumph, he was easily outmanoeuvred by a rebel-faction of his party led by Senator Bukola Saraki which seized control of the National Assembly. Till the end of his eight years in office it was not clear whether he could really play politics. After he handed over power to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023, he quietly retired to his hometown in Daura, Katsina State, where he was born about 83 years ago on December 17, 1942.
His first tour of duty ended in 1985 as military Head of State, after which he was put in detention by his old friend and ultimate Nemesis, General Ibrahim Babangida. After he regained his freedom, Buhari returned home to Daura to tend his cattle and tried his hands on other things. He had nothing to show to his people that he was once a powerful man in Lagos. Then history presented him with a return ticket in 2015 on the platform of the APC and throughout his tenure, he remembered his people in Daura and Katsina State in general. They also knew that they had a powerful man in power. Schools, hospitals, rail stations, military presence and many federal institutions reported in Katsina State. Buhari, the homeboy, did well for Nigeria and did better for Daura and Katsina. It is a telling irony that Buhari did not build a world-class hospital in Daura or any other place in Nigeria, to cater to his special needs and the needs of rich and powerful Nigerians who are always on queue at the gates of foreign hospitals.
Buhari joined the military in 1962 after graduating from the Katsina Provincial Secondary School. Though Nigeria was now an independent country, the army of 1962 was still dominated by the British who created the institution as the iron rod of colonial administration. By 1966, thanks to the diligence of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and his Minister of Defence, Mohammadu Ribadu, the army had been transformed. Buhari too had changed and when Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and his band of rebels struck on January 16, 1966, killing Balewa and many top politicians and soldiers, Buhari too knew his life had changed. Then the revenge coup of July 29, 1966 which brought General Yakubu Gowon to power. Buhari and his colleagues have become instrumental to Nigeria’s future. Less than a year later, Nigeria was at war to quell a rebellion led by a former Nigerian Army officer, Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Buhari and many of his old colleagues were to spend most part of the crisis at the war front.
Buhari was one of the senior officers who played secondary roles in the toppling of General Yakubu Gowon on July 29, 1975, the ninth anniversary of his ascension to power after the bloody counter-coup of 1966. The ring leaders were young officers like Lieutenant Colonel Shehu Musa-Yar’Adua, Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo and Brigadier Joseph Naven Garba, the Commander of the Brigade of Guards. They installed their former war commanders in power; General Murtala Muhammed as Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo as his deputy and General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma as the Commander of the Army. Not everyone was happy with the arrangement and in a bloody putsch, General Muhammed was killed on February 13, 1976. Obasanjo became Head of State in the aftermath and Yar’Adua, one of the original plotters, became his deputy.
Things were to change dramatically for Buhari under Obasanjo. After the coup of 1975, Muhammed had made him the Governor of North-Eastern State and later Borno State. Obasanjo now wanted him in Lagos and made him the Federal Commissioner (Minister) for Petroleum. Obasanjo handed over power to elected President Shehu Shagari on October 1, 1979, becoming the first African military ruler to hand over power to a democratically elected successor. Buhari went back to the barracks, becoming the General Officer Commanding, GOC, of the 3rd Division, Jos, Plateau State. Shagari was now in power and the new men of power decided to look back. One day Senator Olusola Saraki from Kwara State said there was a report that 2.8 billion dollars was missing from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, accounts when Buhari was Minister of Petroleum. They summoned his boss, Obasanjo, to come and testify. Obasanjo was furious and decided to ignore them. The venerable Chief Rotimi Williams, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, agreed with him and took the case to court, asserting that Obasanjo was not just an ordinary person, but an institution.
The court agreed. Obasanjo believe his Minister, ramrod and unbending, was as clean as a flint. Yet the press went on a feast and Buhari was deeply hurt. Dr Tai Solarin, the human right activist and teacher who started the rumour, when summoned by the Senate, to testify, claimed he heard the rumour on a molue bus! He was to pay dearly for his unconscionable mendacity.
Then Buhari moment came in the night of December 31, 1983, when soldiers invaded Akinola Aguda House, Abuja, the temporary residence of the President, and drove Shagari out of power. Brigadier Ibrahim Bako, the officer who led the assault, was killed during the operation, some says by friendly fire. Two of Buhari’s old classmates were to play prominent roles in the new administration. Major-General Ibrahim Babangida became Chief of Army Staff. Major General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, was pushed out of the army and made the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Tension soon arose among the old friends over Buhari’s draconian policies; jailing of hundreds of old politicians, execution of convicted drug peddlers, imposition of severe punishments for currency trafficking and the controversial Law Against Indiscipline. When top editors of the Concord Group of Newspapers interviewed him at the old State House in Doddan Barracks in Lagos, Buhari declared flatly: “I will tamper with the freedom of the press!’’
He did.
He and his tempestuous deputy, Major-General Babatunde Idiagbon, were colliding with too many interests and it was not surprising when Buhari was toppled in a palace coup on August 27, 1985.
His old friend, General Babangida, became his Nemesis. Buhari was to spend more than 20 months in detention. He was given a taste of his own medicine. Freed from detention, he retreated to his farm in Daura and shied away from national affairs. Then General Sani Abacha, in the wake of the June 12 crisis, seized power from the regime of Chief Ernest Shonekan in 1993. Abacha then retrieved Buhari from exile and made him the chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, a national platform which he used with éclat, displaying that he still possessed the clarity of thought and personal discipline and charisma to imposed his personality on a national assignment. It is a telling testament of his capacity and resources that his association with Abacha did not dent his national standing.
He was back.Democracy provided him a new platform and he tried to get back his old job through the ballot box. He contested several times to be President and failed spectacularly until Bola Ahmed Tinubu and a motley crowd of leading politicians rescued him from his unprofitable parochialism. He won the 2015 presidential election; a fitting crescendo to a life of relentless pursuit of power. His regime, brought into power on the promise of change, struggled against old problems like corruption and insecurity. The emergence of the armed Fulani herdsmen as a nation-wide security menace, gave a particularistic colouration to his regime. That phenomenon, with its bestial wildness and gory manifestations, remains a troubling presence in the nation till today.
Though now dead, Buhari will always be alive on the pages of Femi Adesina’s unputdownable memoir, Working with Buhari, a vivid portrayal of the President up-close as a humane, loyal and deeply passionate man of steely resolve.
He was unrelenting and tireless in his determination to battle the coalition of daemons that constantly challenge his efforts to remake Nigeria. He emerged from his years of power still with his saintly reputation, but with qualified success.
He was a good man; shy, diffident, firm, disciplined. He struggled to control the irascible temper of our great country and propel it into a more predictable orbit. He achieved good results but did not win all his battles. His life was full.
Now it has ended. May his valiant soul rest in peace.
Dare Babarinsa, CON is the Chairman, Gaskia Media Ltd
