BY REV FR GERALD NWAFOR
The good is very simple: he was the president of Nigeria twice, from 1983 to 1985 and from 2015 to 2023. The first time, he came as a military junta that disrupted the second republic through the barrels of the gun. On his second missionary journey as a civilian president, he won the elections in 2015 and 2019 through the democratic process. The topic of whether he won or rigged the election is left for another day.
The bad news was that he died recently on the 13th day of July 2025 in a London hospital. I remember the old dictum that says that we should not speak badly or ill of the dead. I agreed with the dictum 100% but the dictum did not say do not speak truth of the dead.
Moreover, in life and law, truth is a defence. It was bad that he died, but that should not stop people from saying the truth about his life and sounds. The ugly is the legacy he left behind as the chief servant of Nigeria as president for ten years. During his first time as a military government, he was popular with WAI (War Against Indiscipline). I don’t think he won that war against indiscipline because from that time on, the language of the people changed from bad to worse. We used to call people who took our money and properties thieves, but the government of Buhari came and started using some words that were not very familiar to the people, for example, maladministration, embezzlement, refundment, malappropriation, nepotism, and mismanagement. He even set up a public enquiry, and all those dramas came to nothing. I was young then, but one of my grouses with him was the imprisonment of Chief Sir Alex Ekwueme, who was the vice president of the country, while the president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, was allowed to stay in his house, and it was said that he was under house arrest.
Our common hero Fela Kuti asked the simple question to the military government, “How can a bus driver hit a pedestrian on the crosswalk (zebra crossing) and the police will arrest the bus conductor and allow the driver to walk free?” This is the kind of jungle justice we got from our former president, which doesn’t do good to the homogeneity of the Nigerian people.
He called the people of the former vice president a dot in a circle and promised to deal with them the way he did during the Civil War. That left a very bad taste in the mouth of the southeastern people of Nigeria, also known as the Igbo race.As I stated earlier, that truth is a defence, and that we are not supposed to say anything bad about the dead.
This article is about the legacy of Buhari as it concerns his time as President of Nigeria. In his second coming as the civil President under the APC (All Progressive Congress), he promised to fight the Boko Haram Islamic terrorist, stop crude oil theft, and improve the value of the Naira to one dollar to be one dollar. When he took over in 2015, the Naira was 200 to one dollar. By the time he left in 2023, there was no value to Naira at all. People can just wake up one morning and say anything, and that will be the exchange rate for the day. The central bank governor, in connivance with him, was printing Naira like a newspaper. The monetary policy failed woefully, and the next incoming government did not know what to do with the Naira, and hence the floating of the currency.
The amount of money he spent to repair the refinery could build six new refineries in Africa, but look at what we got in 8 years: moribund refineries that cannot produce a liter of fuel. Thanks to God that the new government has the courage now to say publicly that the old refineries cannot be repaired. Obasanjo said that in 2005, and offered Shell the refinery, but Shell declined, saying it could not be repaired. In 2015, ten years after Buhari took over power in Nigeria, and he had squandered more than 10 billion dollars in the name of TAM (Turn Around Maintenance) of the refineries. So, what Obasanjo saw in 2005, he did not see in 2015? I’m only asking some pertinent questions and waiting for pertinent answers.
The number of terrorist organizations has increased in Nigeria since he became the President. The agitation group increased from one to three. Although during his campaign in 2014, he promised to take Nigeria from top to bottom, we thought it was a joke; little did we know that he would keep that promise. He was in charge when a known terrorist escaped from prison and the people of the Middle Belt were being killed in their numbers, and he sat comfortably on the seat of power using a toothpick to pick his teeth while the citizens died every day. I am working hard to see one legacy he left before leaving the office on the 29th day of May 2023. I remembered that under his watch INEC chairman announced the result of the election by 4 AM and handed over to his successor. What could be more callous and sinister than destroying the mandate and the wish of the electorate?
I wish history would judge him well. Finally, I also read the comments of most Nigerians about the legacies of Buhari. I saw a pastor saying that he was the minister of petroleum without any fuel station. I wonder how some of us carry across judgment when it comes to friendship and cronies. Nobody has judged a good president by the wealth they accumulated while in office, but by the legacy they left behind while in office, the economic indices and the welfare of the people while they were in office. The president is the number one citizen of every nation, and therefore, his legacy should not be second-guessed.
The time Buhari spent in the public service from 1970, after the civil war, till 2023, which is 53 years, should have made the citizens miss him. He was a governor, PTF Chairman, Minister of Petroleum, and the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. There was no legacy in any of the places where he took charge, whether for ten years or three months. The only truth we have on him was the fact that he was the president of Nigeria twice, which is the highest office in the land. Goodbye Buhari.
