The soldier and politician Muhammadu Buhari, who has died aged 82, was both military dictator and, three decades later, democratically elected president of Nigeria. His reputation as a no-nonsense general gained him lasting popularity, but also much criticism, with charges of repression and human rights abuses, as well as failure to tackle the economy or jihadist terrorism.
His election in 2015 was notable for being the first to unseat an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan. However this success was also his fourth attempt. Buhari had secured millions of votes in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections, but fell short of the required voting margins partly because, as a Muslim from the north, who supported sharia law, he was unpopular in southern and central Nigeria.
He finally succeeded in 2015 by marketing himself as a “reformed democrat” and appointing a top clergyman from the country’s biggest Pentecostal megachurch, Yemi Osinbajo, as his deputy.
“I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” he said on his inauguration day, a quote that became his mantra.
At 72, he was also the oldest person elected to the office in Nigeria, and that set the pace of his presidency, earning him the nickname “Baba Go Slow”. In his first term, the goodwill began to dissipate after he took five months to appoint a cabinet and reintroduced the same economic policies from his military days.
His “hands-off” management style led to the view that others, in particular his nephews and chief of staff, were running the show. This was reinforced by a viral photo of Buhari picking his teeth in the presidential palace, and a 104-day absence on medical grounds in 2017, fuelling conspiracy theories that he had died and been replaced by a Sudanese body double.
During his two-term tenure, Nigeria faced some of its worst security crises since the Biafran war (1967-70). Boko Haram – which Buhari had promised to crush – abducted, displaced and killed thousands of civilians, and split, as one faction became the Islamic West Africa Province. Still, his government claimed the jihadists had been “technically defeated”.
After the army shot peaceful protesters during anti-police brutality demonstrations in 2020 in Lagos, Buhari’s national address days later ignored the killings entirely.
By the time he left office in 2023, Nigeria, then Africa’s largest economy, had slumped to two recessions in eight years, despite there being none in the two decades before. The naira became one of the worst performing global currencies, forcing the central bank to try unorthodox measures.
One of those was cutting down trees in the capital Abuja so that streetside bureau de change operators would have no shade to do business under. Thousands of young people left the country in its biggest emigration wave in decades. Nevertheless, Buhari remained popular, especially in northern Nigeria, where many acknowledged the failure of his policies but blamed those around him.
Born in Daura, in northern Nigeria, he was the son of Adamu and Zulaiha Buhari. After school in Katsina, at 19 he joined the army, and underwent training in the UK, at Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot (1962-65). He was commissioned as a second lieutenant two years later and progressed through the ranks, serving as a minister in the military regime that ruled Nigeria from 1975 to 1979. His hardline character was spotted in April 1983 when, as a commanding officer of an armoured division, his troops pursued invading Chadian forces across the border disregarding orders by the then president Shehu Shagari. By 31 December, he had overthrown Shagari in a coup.
Buhari and his never-smiling deputy, Tunde Idiagbon, emphasised anti-corruption and discipline under a “war against indiscipline” campaign, which manifested itself as authoritarianism, press suppression and human rights abuses. In April 1985, for instance, three men were executed by firing squad for drug offences instead of the maximum six-month jail term, after a new decree was retroactively applied.
Three months later came the “Umaru Dikko affair”: the attempted kidnapping of a former minister in London using a crate uncovered by British customs officials at Heathrow airport, which led to a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Nigeria and the UK. In August 1985 Buhari was ousted from office by another junta. He spent three years under house arrest, then led a relatively quiet life until democracy was restored in Nigeria in 2003, and he began his presidential campaigns.
Following his 2011 election loss, Buhari said in a speech: “If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
The remarks caused alarm given that post-election violence had already led to the deaths of more than 800 people. But his supporters framed it as a metaphor for resistance to electoral malpractice.
In 2019, the popular Nigerian newspaper the Punch announced in an editorial that it would prefix Buhari’s name with his military rank and refer to his administration as a “regime” to protest about the government’s “serial disregard for human rights, court orders, and the battering of other arms of government and Nigeria’s democratic institutions”.
Buhari’s spokesperson responded by saying that as he had earned the rank, the newspaper was free to use it, a “testimony to press freedom in Nigeria”.
After stepping down in 2023, Buhari confined himself mostly to his Daura home until he arrived in London for medical care.
His first marriage, to Safinatu Yusuf, in 1971, ended in divorce. Buhari is survived by his second wife, Aisha (nee Halilu), whom he married in 1989, their son and four daughters, and three daughters from his first marriage (another daughter from that marriage predeceased him).
