Muhammadu Buhari

Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (17 December 1942 – 13 July 2025) was born at Daura in the Katsina Emirate, the 23rd child of his father Mallam Hardo Adamu, a Fulani cattle-rearer of the Toranke clan, and the 13th of his mother Hajiya Zulaihat. His father died when he was about four years old. He attended Daura and Mai'adua Primary Schools (1948–53), Katsina Provincial Secondary School (1956–61), and was commissioned into the Nigerian Army via the Nigerian Military Training College Kaduna and Mons Officer Cadet School Aldershot (1962–63). He completed advanced officer courses at the Defence Services Staff College Wellington, India (1973) and the US Army War College Carlisle (1979–80).

He served as Platoon Commander in the UN ONUC mission in Congo (1963), commanded a battalion during the Biafra war, was Military Governor of the North-Eastern State (1975–76) under Murtala, Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources and inaugural Chairman of NNPC (1976–78) under Obasanjo I, and GOC 4th Infantry Division Ibadan and 3rd Armoured Division Jos. As GOC he led the 31 December 1983 coup against Shagari with Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon as second-in-command. The War Against Indiscipline of his Supreme Military Council was the most disciplinarian regulatory programme in Nigerian peacetime history. Decree 4 of 1984 made it a criminal offence to publish material that 'embarrassed' a public official, even if true; under it Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of The Guardian were jailed for one year. The botched attempt to abduct former minister Umaru Dikko from London in a diplomatic crate (5 July 1984) ruptured Anglo-Nigerian relations for years.

Buhari was overthrown by his Chief of Army Staff Major-General Ibrahim Babangida in a bloodless palace coup on 27 August 1985 and detained at Benin City until 1988. He served as Chairman of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) under Abacha (1994–98), administering the windfall created by the Abacha-era fuel price increases — an episode that built his reputation for personal probity (no PTF funds were ever shown to have been diverted to his personal account). He contested the presidency three times unsuccessfully (ANPP 2003, ANPP 2007, CPC 2011) before winning under the new APC alliance against incumbent Goodluck Jonathan in March 2015 — the first time in Nigerian history that an opposition candidate defeated a sitting president.

He served two terms (2015–2023). His morally most significant act was Executive Order of 6 June 2018 making 12 June (not 1 October) Democracy Day, and the posthumous award of the GCFR to Chief M.K.O. Abiola and of the GCON to Abiola's running mate Babagana Kingibe and lawyer Gani Fawehinmi — completing the constitutional rehabilitation of June 12. His administration's signature programmes included the N-Power youth employment scheme, the Anchor Borrowers' Programme of the CBN (rice and wheat smallholder credit), the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the Social Investment Programme (Conditional Cash Transfer, Home Grown School Feeding), the closure of the land borders (2019–20), the Petroleum Industry Act (16 August 2021 — the longest-pending bill in Fourth Republic history), and the negotiation of the AfCFTA accession.

His tenure also included two technical recessions (2016 and 2020), the COVID-19 lockdowns, the largest sustained insecurity crisis since the Biafran War (Boko Haram and ISWAP in the North-East; bandits in the North-West; IPOB and 'unknown gunmen' in the South-East; the Fulani-herder / farmer conflict in the Middle Belt), the End SARS protests of October 2020 culminating in the Lekki Toll Gate shootings of 20 October, the 9-month ASUU strike of 2022, and the chaotic naira-redesign exercise of Q1 2023 that disrupted the February 2023 elections. His own prolonged medical absences in London (2017 — 104 cumulative days) revived the constitutional debate over Section 145 transmission of power.

He retired to his farm at Daura. He died at a London clinic on 13 July 2025 at the age of 82 after a long illness, and was buried at Daura on 15 July in accordance with Islamic rites. His widow Aisha Halilu Buhari was the first First Lady to publicly criticise her husband's administration (BBC Hausa interview, October 2016). His personal frugality, austere demeanour and Spartan public manner — what Nigerian commentary collectively called the 'Buhari mystique' — set him apart from his Fourth Republic peers; he is the only Nigerian Head of State to have governed as both a military ruler and an elected civilian.