MUHAMMADU BUHARI: The war veteran and converted democrat

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

“In a land where a musician has ’30 billion in his account’, its president is N30 million worth! Who is this man and why is he always redefining life as a piece of worthless sojourn where regardless of your accumulation, you are going to leave it empty and void?”

Two weeks after President Muhammadu Buhari’s passing in far away London hospital on Sunday July 13 and his eventual interment in his home in Daura, Katsina State on Tuesday July 15, 2025, the sweet memory of the three-time leader of world’s most populous black country remains difficult to forget.

The giant is dead but his memory remains fresh with us daily and so we are inclined to take retrospective look at his legacy of Buharism that has now more realistically become an ideology, a case study.

Despite his demise, those who want to continue to lie pushing their own self-made two-year-old hardship on him keep doing so. But, like the spirit of the former governor-general of Nigeria is fighting, ardent believers in his virtues, values and uncommon contributions he made to the development of the country have spat into the sky, catching it again with their own face and vowing that “never with us alive anyone will rewrite the the history of legacy left behind as a good, great leader of the black nation.”

As captain in the Nigerian Army, he fought a war to keep the unity of the peoples of the country between 1967 and 1970 and returned unhurt and without anyone being able to pinpoint one area that he committed a breach of rules of engagement during the war. Forty five years after the avoidable war, Buhari became the democratically elected President of Nigeria that implemented the long owed gratuity of Biafran soldiers who had since been forgiven for taking arms against their own country.

Long do before then, Buhari as a colonel of the Army had served as Military Governor of North Eastern State (now split into six states of Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe) and, later as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum Resources, he singlehandedly built the country’s only four refineries ever after which there has been none.

Against the misconception that he was a coup plotter, Major General Muhammadu Buhari was on his own abroad on foreign service when those who overthrew the Alhaji Shehu Usman Shagari-led democratically elected government of his home country recalled and asked him to be the bridge for peace among the military stakeholders involved and he became the Military Head of State after the December 31st, 1983 coup announced by Brigadier General Dongoyaro.

He was removed one year eight months, in August 1985, after by the same military gulag that out heads together to make him their leader as head of state. But before his ouster, But within the short time he was in power, he was able to generate so much legacy that earned him the cult-like followership that started giving him a bulk vote of 12.5 million the moment he vied into politics of the Fourth Republic in 2003.

Buhari clearly won the 2007 election but the establishment allegedly rigged him out and this can be verified with the statement of his fellow Katsina brother, Umar Musa Yar’Adua, who was declared by the Maurice Ewu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) when he publicly in his inauguration address admitted that the election that brought him to office was fraud but that he would correct the problem. And he started the correction by asking the Supreme Court of Nigeria to re-open the 2007 election case. The rest is history today until 2015 when Buhari repeated his win still maintaining his usual bulk of 12.5 million votes with additional one million from the same North only for the entire Tinubu’s South (West, East and South) to give him only two million. That was the only election that ever had record according to former Edo State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mike Igini.

Apart from the fact that Buhari as Military Head of State ran a democratic soldier like regime where he made each of the 19 states of the time ruled by Military Governor of its indigeniety with the likes of Commodore Michael Bamidele Otiko (Old Ondo State with Ekiti still under), Col David Ejor (Old Bendel State with Delta still under), Col. Oladipo Diya (Ogun State), Group Captain Gbolahan Mudashiru (Lagos), Col Oladayo Popoola (Oyo State with Osun still under) among others, he ensured true democracy where separation of powers whereby as president he did not interfere in the affairs of Legislature and Judiciary as en Executive President.

President Muhammadu Buhari will also be remembered as one Nigerian leader with utmost respect for Democratic principles such as the rule of law and party supremacy despite knowing that some leaders within the party connived to ultracise or sideline his own CPC bloc members from relevance under his own leadership as the most powerful man in the land.

In sn election that he was contesting and having interest in, sitting President Muhammadu Buhari would tell electorate during campaign to “vote for candidate of your choice across the political party”. He would never be found wanting in the plot of any kind be it drifting the country into one-party state or causing crisis within other parties or refusing to register new political parties in order to weaken credible opposition so as not to compete with him in the election. Not Buhari would do that.

Those who celebrated his death mainly Sunday Igboho and Omoyele Sowore (Yoruba men) and Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB supporters (Igbo) would have their place in the history of Nigeria how they expected that, while they plotted felon and change of government through rebellion against their own country under a leader they had reason to fault, they should be left to continue.

In his post titled “The poor president in a rich nation via his Facebook timeline on May 29, 2019, Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice wondered that in “a land where a musician has ’30 billion in his account’, its president is N30 million worth!”

He then moved to probe into the personality of such a man that President Muhammadu Buhari was saying, “Who is this man and why is he always redefining life as a piece of worthless sojourn where regardless of your accumulation, you are going to leave it empty and void?”

The DEFENDER Newspaper missed the opportunity last year to have the former president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari retired, deliver its keynote address at its annual public lecture and awards programme at Nicon Luxury Hotel, Abuja. Things exposed by Abdullahi in this write-up made the global online newspaper so much emotionally connected to the former president’s personality until that opportunity finally deemed Sunday July 13, 2025 when he passed away in a London clinic.

According to the piece, “The poor president in a rich nation – he is worth 30 million, 270 cows, 25 sheep, five horses, birds and economic trees,” with houses mainly in Kaduna and Daura and the houses made of “mud.”

Specifically Abdullahi O Haruna said, “In a land where a musician has ’30 billion in his account’, its president is N30 million worth! Who is this man and why is he always redefining life as a piece of worthless sojourn where regardless of your accumulation, you are going to leave it empty and void?

“If the life of this man doesn’t awe you, inspire you and make you contented with whatever comes your way, then you have a problem grappling with the awesomeness of life.

“This is the time for investigative journalists to go deeper in search of the worth of this man beyond what he has submitted in his assets declaration. The mystery and otherwise of this man must be unravelled, we must know the DNA of his existence why greed, insatiable needs and materialism does not define his creed,” he charged but six years after this write-up, no media investigated report, neither even research work of any opposition or political enemy was able to prove Buhari wrong on his submitted asset declaration till he had his last breath.

But just ahead of that, Abdullahi had concluded that, “The man Muhammadu Buhari is a case in the study of human mystery… Mysteriously musing.”

He also ended well by asking God to forgive him and also asking Nigerians to do same for him, anyone whom he might have hurt in anyway or the other. Yes, he should because Allah did not say he create any man a saint other than the chosen holy prophets. One more was that, from all verifiable sources, President Muhammadu Buhari said kalimatu shahada before he had his last breath.

May the soul of late President Muhammadu Buhari (1984-1985; 2015-2023)