Inna ni llahi wa Ina ilayhi Rajiun. In the vast, unfinished story of Nigeria, few names echo with such paradox and potency as that of Muhammadu Buhari. Soldier and statesman, ascetic and populist, he stood as a symbol, sometimes stern, sometimes stoic, of a generation that bore the burden of a fractured dream.
By Mohammed Mohammed Haruna, PhD
Twice summoned by history, once by force of arms in 1983 and again by the will of the ballot in 2015.
Buhari’s leadership bookends an era marked by a yearning for discipline, order, and moral clarity. He ascended not merely on the back of political machinery but on a tide of mass yearning for integrity, for justice, for a return to simplicity in a country burdened by opulence and elite impunity.
His was a spartan ethos, a self-denial that resonated deeply with the everyday Nigerian. To his countless followers, especially in the North, Buhari was more than a politician. He was “Mai Gaskiya” the man of truth. A myth, perhaps, but a living one; one whose presence evoked nostalgia for a harder, purer Nigeria that may never have truly existed, but which his persona made believable.
And yet, like all who hold power, Buhari was not without flaws. His rigidity, occasionally interpreted as principle, sometimes birthed silence when speech was needed, and action when empathy was more befitting. In trying to govern with clean hands, he was often accused of selective blindness. The populist who distrusted elite politics became, in time, entangled in its complexities.
Still, in Daura, his quiet hometown nestled in the Katsina savannah, Buhari often found peace. There, the grandeur of Abuja faded into the humbler rhythm of cattle, courtyards, and contemplation. That rural stillness was perhaps the true mirror of his soul. An austere man out of time, ever grappling with the noise of a nation that demanded more than virtue.
To assess Buhari is to confront the contradiction at the heart of modern Nigerian history: the search for incorruptible leadership in an imperfect polity. He was not the answer, perhaps, but a chapter, a significant, raw, instructive one.
In the end, he, the beloved GMB that became PMB, then Baba Go-Slow, was a man-like me and you: flawed, resolute, but historic, who walked twice into the furnace of Nigerian leadership and emerged both scarred and sanctified.
He had my vote every single time he contested until 2019. By then, I had come to the painful conclusion that the state of the nation under his watch, four years on, had fallen far short of my expectations in 2015. It was a disappointing realization.
Yet, to his credit, President Buhari the man remained remarkably untainted by a personal scandal particularly the kind involving self-enrichment. In a political culture often riddled with excess and impropriety, that stood out.
May his memory provoke not just veneration but reflection on leadership recruitment and development in our motherland.
Allah ya jikan Baba Buhari.
Dr. Haruna writes from Adamawa Street, Off Okada Road, Dutsen- Kuran Hausa,
Minna.
