Op-Ed: The Unflattering Legacy of Nigeria’s Former President Muhammadu Buhari

For many Nigerians, Buhari didn't leave a complicated legacy behind. If anything, his cumulatively almost-decade period as Nigeria's leader is unflattering, as some regard him as the country's worst president, a title he's fighting for alongside men who only ruled as military dictators. The sobering numbers are proof: In eight years as elected president, he more than tripled Nigeria's unemployment rate, inflation climbed, and he nearly doubled the country's debt profile from N42 trillion ($27.5 billion) to N77 trillion ($50.3 billion).

Buhari was born in Daura, Katsina state, in 1942, as the last of his father's 23 children and the last of his mother's 13 children. After attending Katsina Provincial Secondary School, he enlisted in the fifth training course of the Nigerian Military Training College (NMTC).

According to the biography of Shehu Musa Yar'Adua – a former military vice president who was also classmates with Buhari in secondary school and at the NMTC –Buhari's choice to join the army, like many northern officers from that era, was inspired by the then Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi I, who "told one of us that if soldiers could overthrow a line of kings descended directly from the Prophet, it could happen anywhere."

Although he came into office with the self-given mandate of cleaning up the mess made by Shagari's government, Buhari's junta summarily made life worse for Nigerians. A struggling economy was exacerbated by several policies, including the tightening of imports, stringent price control measures, and currency adjustments, which led to high inflation, business closures, and an early runway for a recession.

The War Against Indiscipline (WAI) campaign was Buhari's trademark. It involved strict social laws, where citizens could be physically punished for something as trivial as not keeping in line while waiting for buses. His administration also cracked down on journalists using the Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree – popularly known as Decree 4 – as a tool to prosecute those reporting on government dealings.

There was also Decree 2 [the State Security (Detention of Persons Decree], which was used by the Buhari administration to indiscriminately arrest hundreds of politicians, former government officials, and businessmen on corruption charges. The Decree allowed Buhari's second-in-command, Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon, to arrest and detain individuals for up to three months, which could be indefinitely renewable if suspicion persisted.

Buhari's military government was characterized by a level of hardheadedness that was epitomized by the attempted kidnap of Umar Dikko, a former minister in the Shagari government accused of embezzling public funds. Dikko was in the U.K. on asylum when the botched operation was attempted. The Buhari government also imprisoned fierce government critic and Afrobeat icon Fela Anikulapo-Kuti on trumped-up foreign currency charges.

Buhari had zero tolerance for critics, even after he re-entered office as a democratically elected president. According to reports, nearly 200 journalists were arrested during his eight-year term in office, one of several markers of his attempts to shrink the civic space and quash dissent. In October 2020, after weeks of protests against endemic police brutality, soldiers shot at unarmed protesters at the Lekki tollgate, in the heart of Lagos, a brazen operation that could've only taken place with the assent of the President.

The post, which was a transcript of a speech he delivered at an event, was widely reported by many and then taken down. The resulting ban was undoubtedly connected to Twitter being a prominent tool for dissent and serving as a virtual platform for organizing the decentralized demonstrations in 2020. Even after the ECOWAS court declared the ban unlawful, stating that it interfered with the fundamental human right to expression, Nigerians could only access the social site using VPNs for over six months.

As a civilian president, Buhari never feigned total respect for the rule of law. Early into his presidency, the signs were there, with security operatives invading the homes of judges across the country. Buhari's government routinely flouted court orders, denying releases in a handful of high-profile cases. It was a rehash of Decree 2, which granted the government the authority to arrest and detain individuals. In a democracy, that level of impunity shouldn't be associated with a president.

The déjà vu feeling extended to the economy, as he revisited some of the disastrous policies he had attempted in the 1980s. Buhari ordered a stop to the importation of over a dozen items, the most (un)popular being rice. It was a measure to boost local production, but it turned out to be calamitous; the price of a bag of rice skyrocketed from N7,500 ($5) to N65,000 ($43) and above.

While Buhari's (re)entry into office coincided with crude oil, Nigeria's main export, sliding to low prices, his first six months were defined by the lack of a cabinet to begin carrying out tasks needed to get the country on the right track. Unsurprisingly and sadly, Nigeria slid into recession just over a year into his first term, reaching previously unseen levels of multidimensional poverty years later. Additionally, the current abysmally low value of the naira can be attributed to his time in office, when it deteriorated from bad to much, much worse.

While his government boasted a handful of infrastructure projects, including a few rail projects, these pale in comparison to the high inflation rates, substantial debt, and severe levels of corruption witnessed under his tenure. To the latter, Buhari's campaign that brought him into office championed him as non-tolerant towards corruption. That, like his other praised virtues, proved to be nothing but wishful thinking.

Alongside his woeful management of the economy, he left the country more insecure than he found it. As a former military general, famed for driving out armed rebels in the Lake Chad region in the 1970s, Buhari didn't just fail to tackle insurgency; it thrived under his nose. After his government declared that the insurgent group Boko Haram was "technically defeated," the scourge of unknown gunmen and armed groups terrorized – and continue to terrorize – communities across the country, with many kidnapped, displaced, and killed.

A handful of the tributes shared by politicians have consistently described Buhari as honest. Perhaps there's some merit to that, but it also feels apt to deem the way he came back into office as a path lined by deceit; he never proved to be a reformed democrat, and his "change" slogan ended up being more or less of the same.