The teachable moments that were Buhari’s passage, by Rotimi Fasan

As would be expected of a public figure, the death of former President, Muhammadu Buhari, has dominated the news in the last few days. Report of his passage first came to me on Sunday evening from Arise TV’s Reuben Abati who suddenly deviated from the subject of discussion on the programme he anchors every Sunday to make the announcement.

I was immediately filled with a sense of deep sorry despite my frequently severe criticism of his government policies for most of his years in power. Only a few days before that announcement, it was reported that he had been ill and was responding well to treatment. This was at the public presentation of the book written by one of his two senior media advisers, Mallam Garba Shehu. 

Buhari’s other media adviser, Femi Adesina, had presented his own books (he wrote a couple of them) a few months ago without the needless controversy that Boss Mustapha, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, had sought to create around Garba’s book with his widely-rejected claim that the Buhari tendency of the coalition that brought him to power in 2015 contributed more to his victory in that year’s polls than the Bola Ahmed Tinubu group.

Mustapha was in a sense engaged in a proxy battle that his kinsman and predecessor in office, Babachir Lawal, has been prosecuting to his own embarrassment without any success. As would be confirmed by his once-powerful nephew, Mamman Daura who has also been recuperating from an undisclosed ailment in London where Buhari passed his last days, the expectation was that the former military ruler and Nigeria’s fifth President would be back home soon.  

But his condition suddenly took a turn for the worse and he was gone before sundown on Sunday, July 13. He was 82 and had been out of office for only two and a half years. For members of his immediate and extended families, news of his death has been devastating. Heart-wrenching footage of when some of them were confronted with the shattering news has been circulated. Like his family members, his political associates have been saddened by his death. They have mostly had kind words to say about his years in office, including his career as an army officer and, eventually, Nigeria’s military head of state from January 1, 1984 to August 26, 1985.

Unlike Buhari’s family members, his political associates and Nigeria’s class of power mongers in general, many ordinary Nigerians have had very harsh words to share about Buhari, beginning with the fact that his last days were spent in a foreign hospital despite having all the opportunity to build world class medical facilities as he enjoyed in London during his combined ten years reign as both a dictator and an elected president. 

His passage has offered many Nigerians teachable moments in the use and abuse of power and for this Buhari has been excoriated as much for what he did while in office as for what he did not do.  There have been reports of some in the far North where Buhari for many years commanded a cult-like following jubilating at the announcement of his death. There are suggestions that some of those who chose the occasion of Buhari’s passage to engage in dark celebrations were members of outlaw groups motivated by sectarian considerations. Beyond the celebration of such fringe groups, the general verdict of Nigerians on the Buhari years has been very frank. 

Even though I was much saddened by Buhari’s death, the widespread criticism of his rulership in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of his death has occasioned a frank appraisal of his performance as president. As the circle of criticisms widened and more Nigerians remembered their pain and the nature of their frustration under Buhari’s stewardship, so was I drawn into recollecting along with them the many occasions when the Buhari government literally averted its gaze as terrorist pretending to be farmers visited death in its hundreds on sleepy communities across the North-Central, South-East and South-West states. These episodes were perpetrated by persons not altogether unknown to the security agencies. That legacy of entrenched impunity is still being felt across the North-Central states of Benue, Nassarawa and Plateau where scores of villages have been sacked and their inhabitants killed in their tens of hundreds in the most horrendous fashion in the last few months of this year alone. 

Many recall the manner he  “tampered” (to use his word from his first interview as a military head of state during which he threatened to curtail press freedom) with the instruments of free speech and association- the ban on twitter and the means through which Nigerians could make payment in foreign currencies; the border closure and ban on food importation at a time when food inflation was running many out of their mind. How about the harsh response to the #EndSARS protests, the currency colouration/change that left many destitute and deprived them access to their funds in banks? How could many forget the tone-deafness of his government to their cries; the callous indifference to suffering non-Fulani or non-Islamic communities? The lack of oversight over appointees that were kept in office literally for sitting on their palms? 

As a leader, especially in his second coming as a reconditioned democrat, Buhari would appear to have sought power for its own sake and frittered away the hopes Nigerians who supported his emergence had in him. His personal example of spartan leadership is a tiny dot in a vast ocean of corruption by which he was encircled. He enjoyed the paraphernalia of office without much of the responsibility that he delegated to others. He was for the most part a man of modest demands who, for being too laidback, allowed the perpetration of some of the worst form of economic heist against the Nigerian people. 

He has enjoyed a good life and appeared poised to continue along that line in renewed health after leaving office. He looked healthier and far more relaxed than he ever was as president. He had had his fill and thrill of the presidency by the time he was leaving. His premature ouster in the palace coup of 1985 apparently set off a severe thirst for power that was only slaked by his eight-year presidency. He might have died rather suddenly but not many thought he would live this long following his frequent health challenges in the first two years of his two-term presidency. He spent about six months in London during one spell of his medical tourism. He has danced beyond time and now belongs to the ages. Travel well Baba Buhari! 

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