Buhari: His Life, Times, Politics and Governance Style

Samuel Ajayi looks at the early life, times, politics and public service mindset of the late President, Muhammadu Buhari

With the death of former President Muhammadu Buhari, a chapter in the cherquered history of Nigeria has closed. It was a chapter that was fraught with many milestones. But it was a chapter that the history of Nigeria would not be complete without it.
Buhari, born on December 17, 1942 in Daura, in present day Katsina State, he was one of the 23 children of his father, Mallam Adamu. In fact, he would not have been educated, at least formally, if not the benevolence of one Waziri Alhassan, son of a former Emir of Daura, who took in Buhari’s mother Zulaihat and his siblings.
Initially sent to Koranic school, his formal education journey began with his enrolment in a primary school in Daura before moving to Katsina Middle School which was later named Provincial Secondary School where he finished his secondary education in 1961.

Unknown to many Nigerians, Buhari actually wanted to become medical practitioner. That was his dream. However, fate had other ideas. Inspired by the late Hassan Katsina, who was then an already commissioned officer of the Nigerian Army, Buhari’s course of life was to change from an aspiring medical doctor to a military officer.
Shortly before his 20th birthday, Buhari was one of the 70 intakes into the Nigerian Military Training School, NMTC, in Kaduna. The school was to later change to the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA.
Buhari went for officer training course Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot, United Kingdom, in 1962 and upon his return to the country in 1963, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of the Nigerian Army and his first military posting and assignment was as Platoon Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion of the Nigerian Army in Abeokuta, in present day Ogun State.

Buhari’s involvement in the political history of the nation did not just start when he was named the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on December 31, 1983 following the sacking of the then democratically elected government of late President Shehu Shagari.
In fact, he has been involved 17 years before then in 1966 when he joined the likes of General Theophillus Danjuma, to oust then Head of State, late General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi in a counter coup on July 29, 1966.
It was a response to the earlier coup of January 15, 1966 which claimed the lives of the then Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief Samual Ladoke Akintola, Brigadier Ibrahim Maimalari and Colonel Abogo Largema.

The killings, perhaps with some element of justification, were seen as being lopsided in terms of killings.
Buhari also played his role in the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970. He was the adjutant and company commander of the second battalion unit of the second sector of the first division. This division was to start the first action of the civil war when it started in Gakem, very close to Afikpo, in present day Abia State.
After the civil war, Buhari had numerous military postings before becoming the military governor of North-Eastern State in 1975. Again, he was part of young military officers that orchestrated the ascendance to power of late military Head of State, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed.

He later became the military governor Borno State for just 40 days and following the attempted coup that claimed the life of General Mohammed, Buhari became the Minister of Petroleum Resources (they were known then as Federal Commissioners) and when the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was created in 1977, Buhari was named the chairman.
Under him, the NNPC carried out numerous projects which included the construction of the pipeline network connecting the Bonny terminal and Port-Harcourt refinery to the depots and it also initiated the construction of the Kaduna refinery.

Perhaps, Buhari’s biggest involvement in the political history of the country was when he and late General Tunde Idiagbon and other military top brass toppled the democratically elected government of the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari. Buhari was named the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces while the late Idiagbon became the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters.
His government was not only high-handed, it was also draconian. Under the infamous Decree Number Two of 1984 which gave security operatives and the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, which was the second in command to the Head of State, the powers to detain, without charges for up to three months individuals they perceived to be security risks.

Many Nigerians, including journalists, were detained while there was also a ban on public demonstrations. The height of the administration’s high-handedness was the handing down of ridiculous jail terms for former politicians who held elected positions between 1979 and 1983.
There was also the Decree Number Four of 1984, the Protection against False Accusations Decree. This decree stated that “any person who publishes in any form, whether written or otherwise, any message, rumour, report or statement which is false in any material particular or which brings or is calculated to bring the Federal Military Government…to ridicule or disrepute shall be guilty of an offence under this Decree.”

Two journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, were jailed under this decree.
The Buhari/Idiagbon regime also executed convicted drug traffickers and was greatly perceived to be very harsh and unfriendly to the people. It was therefore not surprising when he was toppled on August 27th, 1984 in a coup led by Buhari’s Chief of Army Staff, the Major General Ibrahim Babangida.
Buhari was to be placed under house arrest for over three years until his release in 1988. Upon his release, Buhari went off public glare was rarely seen in public. He did not only refuse to be part of the botched return to civil rule programme of Babangida between 1990 and 1993, he was not making any contribution to any national debate or conversation. He totally became a recluse of sort.
It was not until 1994 that Buhari returned into public space when the then Head of State, late General Sani Abacha, named him as the Chairman of the then newly created Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, PTF, which was created to supervise the disbursement of whatever was saved from the partial removal of subsidy on petroleum products.

HIS POLITICS

When Abacha died suddenly in July 1998, Buhari again went off the radar of national consciousness. In fact, the emergence of General Abdulsalami Abubakar as the new Head of State after the death of Abacha gave the nation a new political and social lease of life.
Abacha did not only choke the nation’s democratic space, he also incarcerated those who could challenge him. The culmination of the charade that was his sham transition programme was when the five registered political parties endorsed him as their joint presidential candidate. His death, much as it was a pain to his immediate family and those benefiting from him, it was also a huge relief to a nation on the brink.
Immediately Abacha died, Buhari recoiled to his shell again and did not participate in the transition programme that culminated in the emergence of his former boss, retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, as a democratically elected President in May 1999.

However, Buhari was to step out of the shadows once again in early 2002 when he announced his intention to participate in the 2003 elections. He joined the now defunct All Nigeria People’s Congress, ANPP, emerged as the presidential candidate of the party. He was defeated by the incumbent, President Obasanjo.
Undaunted, Buhari ran again in 2007, again as the candidate of the same ANPP. But this time, he was defeated by his fellow Katsina indigene and former governor of the state, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. The 2007 election was fraught with irregularities and even the winner of the presidential contest, Yar’Adua, admitted that the election that brought him to power was not a clean one. And this prompted Yar’Adua to embark on sweeping electoral reforms.
The unfortunate death of Yar’Adua after a protracted illness led to the emergence of his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, as the new President. Jonathan completed Yar’Adua’s term office and was the candidate of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, for the 2011 presidential election. Buhari ran, yet again.
However, this time, he ran on the platform of a new party which he floated, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC. This time, he picked charismatic Pentecostal cleric, Pastor Tunde Bakare, as his running-mate. Again, he came a distant second.

One of the things that many believed worked against Buhari in the three times he attempted to govern the country again, this time via the ballot box, was the fact that his politics was not considered a pan-Nigerian in approach and engagement. He was perceived, arguably rightly, as an ethnic irredentist, who would first see the North in anything before seeing the entire country.

He was also seen as a religious bigot who has made pronouncements that were inconsistent with someone who once occupied the highest office in the land. He once led a delegation of northern leaders to Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, to protest against perceived treatment of northerners in the state.
The biggest indication of his lack of religious broad-mindedness was when he addressed a crowd of supporters in Bauchi in the build-up to the 2011 presidential election that they should join him to send the ‘Kafirs’ (infidels and unbelievers) out of Aso Rock presidential Villa.  

Many people were of the opinion that the kind of sectional and inciting rhetoric he espoused during the campaign for the 2011 presidential election led to the bloody protests that followed his loss of the election when over 1000 people were killed including innocent NYSC members. Even before then, his positions on national issues had always aligned with those of the conservative North. For instance, he was fully in support of Sharia and once defended the dreaded Boko Haram sect.

Expectedly, one cannot take away the fact that he was a popular political figure in the North where he was perceived as a very simple and Spartan leader, who would never embezzle public funds. In fact, he enjoyed cult hero support in the region where he was fondly called ‘Mai Gaskiya’ (honest man) or ‘Sai Baba’ (holy one) but unfortunately, this did not translate to national acceptance. He was also rumoured to being averse to doing ‘political business’ with those he considered as ‘dirty politicians’.

All this changed when he started negotiations with other parties in 2012 which led to the formation of the current ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. His party, CPC, had gone into merger talks with the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (CAN), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), a faction of his former party, All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP).
With massive propaganda, the type never seen in the history of the country, Buhari was practically ‘recreated’. Gone were those images and perceptions of an ethnic irredentist and sectional leader. Making the rounds were images of Buhari in bow suit with bow ties. He was roundly accepted in the south, especially, the South-west region, a stronghold of one of the legacy parties that formed the APC, the ACN.
He was also presented as an ultimate corruption fighter who was ready to clean the nation’s Augean stable. Targeting the northern bloc votes, it was not surprising when virtually all key leaders within the new party worked towards his emergence as the candidate of the party in the presidential primary election held in Lagos in December, 2014, where he defeated former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. And three months later, he led the political movement that made history as the first opposition party to win a general election in the history of the country, defeating an incumbent.

GOVERNANCE STYLE

Buhari’s governance style was obviously not to increase the burden on the poor. And he demonstrated this by his reluctance and eventual decision not to remove petroleum subsidy even when he was presented with incontrovertible proof that the regime was no longer sustainable.
Rather, he kept finding a way round it by carrying out partial removal that increased pump price of the product without being too much of burden on the people. Buhari also embarked on massive infrastructure development, especially in the transportation sector with massive investment also in the agricultural sector.
Economically, his attempts to shore up the value of the naira led to debt build-up, especially in foreign currency and this led to massive Way and Means debt burden which the present administration is still battling. Like old habits that usually die hard, Buhari’s sectional mindset was ruthlessly exhibited upon gaining power with an unabashedly lopsided political appointments.

Beyond this, it could be recalled that Buhari rode to power on the back of the promise to fight corruption. In fact, nothing sold him to voters in 2015 than the belief that he would deal with those who stole public funds. But he was a spectacular failure in this regard.
Prodded by politicians around him and his party’s desperation to retain power, the anti-corruption campaign was politically weaponised to get opposition figures to their side. Instead of being tried and made to cough out whatever they stole, opposition figures were ‘encouraged’ to join the ruling party and their sins forgiven.  
By 2019 when Buhari was running for second term in office, he himself knew that using anti-corruption fight for campaign had become hopelessly impossible.