Muhammadu Buhari’s passing in a London hospital on July 13, 2025, may have drawn the curtain on a long and complex life, but the shadow of his leadership still looms over Nigeria, not as a legacy of strength, but of absence. For many Nigerians, the death of the former president offers no closure. It merely revives the unhealed wounds of promises betrayed, democratic institutions weakened, and the slow erosion of national optimism.
To assess Buhari’s record with honesty is not to speak ill of the dead. It is to speak truth to history, a truth too often blurred by nostalgia or northern reverence. From soldier to strongman, from reluctant democrat to distant president, Buhari’s career spanned more than half a century. And yet, for all its duration, it left Nigeria with more questions than answers.
“His leadership style, cloaked in quietude and delegation, left Nigerians guessing where the real power resided.”
In 1983, Buhari came to power as a military dictator, presenting himself as the antidote to Nigeria’s civilian excesses. His infamous War Against Indiscipline tried to remake Nigerian society with a whip and a decree. Citizens were flogged for lateness, journalists jailed for dissent, and political opponents silenced through detention. The regime’s Decree 4 criminalised any reporting that embarrassed the government, a dangerous low for press freedom.
Buhari was overthrown barely two years later. But in 2015, the same man was repackaged and returned, this time via the ballot, as a reformed democrat promising to “kill corruption before it kills Nigeria.” Nigerians, tired of impunity and inertia, embraced him. He became the first opposition candidate to unseat an incumbent president in Nigeria’s history. Many people choose hope over history. That decision would prove costly.
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Under Buhari’s watch, Nigeria’s economy entered two recessions. Inflation spiralled. Food prices tripled. Foreign investment stalled. Policies were reactive, poorly communicated, and often self-defeating. The closure of land borders in 2019, implemented without robust stakeholder consultation, crippled trade and pushed millions further into poverty. The 2022 currency redesign was equally catastrophic, creating a cash scarcity that paralysed the informal economy and devastated small businesses.
The anti-corruption campaign that brought him to power soon unravelled. High-profile arrests were rare; convictions were even rarer. Selective prosecution replaced institutional reform. Transparency took a backseat to propaganda. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s debt stock ballooned, jumping from ₦12.1 trillion in 2015 to over ₦77 trillion by 2023, a staggering increase that leaves future generations mortgaged to the past.
Yet the most damning indictment of Buhari’s tenure lies in his failure to secure the country. He campaigned as a military general who would defeat Boko Haram “within months.” Instead, the insurgency persisted, morphing into banditry, mass abductions, and sectarian killings. The military’s heavy-handed approach led to atrocities of its own: the Zaria massacre in 2015, the Agatu killings in 2016, and the #EndSARS crackdown in 2020, where peaceful protesters were shot at the Lekki Toll Gate.
Throughout it all, Buhari remained a study in stillness: unshaken, unbothered, and, often, unseen. He routinely failed to address the nation during crises, choosing silence over engagement. His leadership style, cloaked in quietude and delegation, left Nigerians guessing where the real power resided. The perception that he favoured his Fulani kinsmen in appointments and policies further deepened ethnic suspicions and social division.
In 2021, his government suspended Twitter after the platform deleted one of his controversial tweets. The ban lasted seven months: a petulant response that hurt digital businesses and muzzled free expression. By then, it had become clear: Buhari may have worn a democratic garb, but his instincts never left the barracks.
Symbolically, his death abroad underscores everything wrong with his presidency. Despite the billions allocated annually to the State House Clinic, ₦3.94 billion in 2015 alone, Buhari consistently sought medical treatment in London. Even in death, he remained physically and emotionally distant from the country he led. A leader who could not trust his own healthcare system could hardly expect citizens to trust his governance.
What, then, is the legacy of Muhammadu Buhari?
To his loyalists, he was incorruptible, modest, and principled. To millions more, he was absent, rigid, and out of touch. But history cannot be built on intentions alone. It is measured by results. And by any measurable index, growth, security, and social cohesion, Buhari left Nigeria worse than he met it.
We must reject the temptation to sanitise his record in death. Not out of spite, but out of duty. If Nigeria is to escape its endless loop of strongmen and saviours, it must begin by holding its leaders accountable, in life and in memory.
Buhari is gone. But the vacuum he left behind remains. And until we learn to demand competence over charisma, presence over persona, and results over rhetoric, that vacuum will continue to haunt us.
