ABOUT two years and 45 days after he left office, President Muhammadu Buhari died on Sunday in a London hospital, where he had been undergoing treatment. His demise came about 42 years after the military major general took over the realms of the leadership of the country as a military head of state. His death also came almost 40 years after he was toppled in a palace coup, after which he was incarcerated for three years by the new military junta. Born in Daura, Katsina State, on December 17, 1942, Buhari served as head of state from 1981 to 1983. He was a cadet at the Nigerian Military Training College and at the Mons Officer Cadet School, Aldershot, England. He joined the Nigerian Army in 1962 and was commissioned in 1963. By 1975, he was a lieutenant colonel and was one of those behind the military coup that ousted General Yakubu Gowon, as head of state.
Military career
In the 1975 military coup d’état, Lieutenant Colonel Buhari was among a group of officers that brought General Murtala Mohammed to power. He was later appointed the governor of the North-Eastern State from August 1, 1975 to February 3, 1976, to oversee social, economic and political improvements in the state. On February 3, 1976, the North Eastern State was split into three states Bauchi, Borno and Gongola. So, Buhari became the first governor of Borno State from February 3, 1976 to March 15, 1976. In March 1976, following the 1976 aborted coup in which General Murtala Mohammed, was assassinated, his deputy, General Olusegun Obasanjo became the head of state and appointed Colonel Buhari as the Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources (now minister). In 1977, when the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was created, Buhari was appointed as its chairman, a position he held until 1978.
His first coming
Buhari was among the leaders of the 1983 coup that toppled the government of President Shehu Shagari in the Second Nigerian Republic. Before then, he was the Major General Officer Commanding (GOC), Third Armoured Division of Jos, Plateau State. After the coup, Major General Tunde Idiagbon was appointed the Chief of General Staff, the Number 2 man in the administration. The coup signaled the death of the Second Republic, after 13 years of military rule that terminated on October 1, 1979. To justify the action of the coup leaders, Buhari accused the civilian government of unbridled corruption. In a post-coup broadcast, the late General Sani Abacha blamed the takeover on ‘an inept and corrupt
leadership’ with general economic decline. In Buhari’s New Year’s Day speech, he too mentioned the corrupt class of the Second Republic but also as the cause of a general decline in morality in society.[45]
The regime of Buhari established the Supreme Military Council in place of the Federal Executive Council and Council of States. He reduced the number of ministries to 18. His regime also carried out a retrenchment exercise among the senior ranks of the civil service and police. It retired 17 permanent secretaries and some senior police and naval officers. Besides, the regime promulgated new laws, among them, the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Decree for the prosecution of robbery cases, and the State Security (Detention of Person) Decree, which gave powers to the military to detain individuals suspected of jeopardizing state security or causing economic adversity.
The other decrees included the Civil Service Commission and Public Offenders Decree, which constituted the legal and administrative basis to conduct a purge in the civil service. Under Decree 2 of 1984, the state security and the chief of staff were given the awesome power to detain, without charges, individuals deemed to be a security risk to the state for up to three months. Strikes and popular demonstrations were banned and the National Security Organisation (NSO) was entrusted with unprecedented powers. The NSO played a wide role in the crackdown on public dissent by intimidating, harassing and jailing individuals who broke the interdiction on strikes. By October 1984, about 200,000 civil servants were retrenched.[49] Buhari mounted an offensive against entrenched interests. In 20 months as Head of State, about 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were jailed for corruption during his stewardship. Detainees were released after releasing sums to the government and agreeing to meet certain conditions. The regime also jailed its critics, including Fela Kuti. He was arrested on 4 September 1984 at the airport as he was about to embark on an American tour. Amnesty International described the charges brought against him for illegally exporting foreign currency as “spurious”. Using the wide powers bestowed upon it by Decree Number 2, the government sentenced the late Afro music legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to five years in prison. He regained his freedom 18 months after as Buhari was toppled from power.
In 1984, Buhari passed the draconian Decree Number 4, the Protection Against False Accusations Decree. According to Section 1 of the law, “Any person who publishes in any form, whether written or otherwise, any message, rumour, report or statement […] which is false in any material particular or which brings or is calculated to bring the Federal Military Government or the Government of a state or public officer to ridicule or disrepute, shall be guilty of an offense under this Decree”. The law further stated that offending journalists and publishers will be tried by an open military tribunal, whose ruling would be final and unappealable in any court and those found guilty would be eligible for a fine not less than N10,000 and a jail sentence of up to two years.
Economic approach
Buhari embarked on austere economic measures, including removing or cutting back the excesses in national expenditure, obliterating or removing completely, corruption from the nation’s social ethics, and shifting from mainly public sector employment to self-employment. He also encouraged import substitution industrialization based on the use of local materials. However, the tightening of imports led to reduction in raw materials for industries leading to many industries to operate below capacity, retrenchment of workers and in some cases, business shutdown. Buhari severed ties with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when the fund asked the government to devalue the naira by 60%. However, the reforms that Buhari instigated on his own were as or more rigorous as those required by the IMF. On May 7 1984, he announced a budget with a series of complementary measures, including a temporary ban on recruiting federal public sector workers; raising of interest rates, halting capital projects, prohibition of borrowing by state governments and 15 percent cut from Shagari’s 1983 Budget, realignment of import duties and reducing the balance of payment deficit by cutting imports. It also gave priority to the importation of raw materials and spare parts that were needed for agriculture and industry.
The other economic measures of his regime were on the form of counter trade, currency change, price reduction of goods and services, but his economic policies caused a rise in inflation and the use of military might to continue to push many of policies escalated food prices.
War Against Indiscipline
One of the most enduring legacies of the Buhari regime as head of state is the War Against Indiscipline (WAI), launched on March 20, 1984. It was borne out of his desire to address the perceived lack of public morality and civic responsibility. Nigerians were ordered to form queues at bus stops, with whip-wielding soldiers nearby. Civil servants, who failed to show up on time at work, were forced to do “frog jumps, “ while minor offences attracted long sentences. Any student over the age of 17 caught cheating on an examination would get 21 years in prison. Counterfeiting and arson could lead to the death penalty.[62]
Buhari’s administration enacted three decrees to investigate corruption and control foreign exchange. The Banking (Freezing of Accounts) Decree of 1984, allotted to the Federal Military Government the power to freeze bank accounts of persons suspected to have committed fraud. The Recovery of Public Property (Special Military Tribunals) Decree permitted the government to investigate the assets of public officials linked with corruption and constitute a military tribunal to try such persons. The Exchange Control (Anti-Sabotage) Decree stated penalties for violators of foreign exchange laws.[63]
Decree 20 on illegal ship bunkering and drug trafficking was another example of Buhari’s tough approach to crime. Section 3 (2) (K) provided that “any person who, without lawful authority deals in, sells, smokes or inhales the drug known as cocaine or other similar drugs, shall be guilty under section 6 (3) (K) of an offence and liable on conviction to suffer death sentence by firing squad. In another prominent case of April 1985, six Nigerians were condemned to death under the same decree: Sidikatu Tairi, Sola Oguntayo, Oladele Omosebi, Lasunkanmi Awolola, Jimi Adebayo and Gladys Iyamah. In 1985, prompted by economic uncertainties and a rising crime rate, the government of Buhari opened the borders (closed since April 1984) with Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon to speed up the expulsion of 700,000 illegal foreigners and illegal migrant workers.
1985 coup
In August 1985, Buhari was toppled in a coup led by members of the Supreme Military Council (SMC). Buhari spent three years in detention in a small guarded bungalow in Benin. He had access to television that only showed two channels and members of his family were allowed to visit him on the authorization of the new military regime in the country.
In December 1988, after his mother’s death he was released. He retired to his residence in Daura. While in detention, his farm was managed by his relatives. In Katsina, he became the pioneer chairman of Katsina Foundation that was founded to encourage social and economic development in Katsina State.
Acid tests
Buhari served as the Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), a body created by the government of General Sani Abacha, and funded from the revenue generated by the increase in price of petroleum products, to pursue developmental projects around the country. A 1998 report in New African praised the PTF under Buhari for its transparency, calling it a rare “success story.” However, during his tenure as Federal Commissioner of Petroleum and Natural Resources, there was a controversy over US$2.8 billion of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. But, in the conclusion of the Crude Oil Sales Tribunal of Inquiry headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe to investigate allegations of 2.8 billion Dollars misappropriation from the NNPC account, the tribunal found no truth in the allegations even though it noticed some lapses in the NNPC accounts.
In 1983, when Chadian forces invaded Nigeria’s Borno State, Buhari used the forces under his command to chase them out of the country, crossing into Chadian territory in spite of an order given by President Shagari to withdraw. This 1983 Chadian military affair led to more than 100 victims and “prisoners of war”.
There was also the Umaru Dikko Affair, a former Minister of Transportation under the Shagari administration. He had fled the country shortly after the 1983 coup. He was accused of embezzling $1 billion in oil profits. With the help of an alleged former Israeli security service, MOSSAD agent, the NSO traced Dikko to London, where he was allegedly drugged and placed him in a plastic bag, which was subsequently hidden inside a crate labelled as “Diplomatic Baggage.” Buhari’s administration was also mired in a controversy concerning the fate of 53 suitcases with unknown contents. The suitcases were being transported by a prominent traditional ruler in the North, whose sibling was Buhari’s close aide. But they were cleared through customs on 10 June 1984 without inspection during his return flight from Saudi Arabia.
Buhari indeed came as a WAI crusader, who went to the battlefield. He may have overcome some of the challenges but he has left the rest of the struggles to make Nigeria rediscover itself for posterity to overcome.
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