By Celestine Mel
The journey has ended. Muhammadu Buhari, soldier-statesman, puritan in a perfidious republic, nationalist of Spartan instincts, has drawn his final breath. At eighty-two, he passed quietly in a London hospital, far from the clamorous theatre of Nigerian politics that had both shaped and resisted him for nearly half a century. With his passing, a profound chapter in Nigeria’s moral and political imagination comes to a close.
He was many things to many people: an enigma to critics, a corrective to those disillusioned by a decadent elite, and to others like me, a moral compass in a field overgrown with weeds of impunity. He was austere but not aloof, intense without flamboyance, and though often misunderstood, remained wholly unbending in his convictions. As a devout Fulani Muslim, his worldview was shaped by the disciplined structures of both faith and culture. I, an unrepentant Annang Christian from the southern tip of Akwa Ibom, found in him a figure whose moral posture resonated across our tribal and theological divides. I became a persistent voice in his defence, not because he was perfect, but because in his imperfections he remained sincere, unbought, and fundamentally incorruptible.
Though we never met, I knew him through the ideals he stubbornly represented. Integrity. Frugality. Duty. These were not just campaign slogans for him, but deep-set convictions, etched into the marrow of his public life. I also knew him through his grandaughter who was born the same time as my son to his daughter, a friend. I spent the better part of his presidency defending his ideals, sometimes against overwhelming opposition, often at the cost of personal relationships and public misunderstanding.
Yet even the most principled leader can be outflanked by his own humanity. Buhari’s greatest political liability was his propensity to repose trust in men unworthy of the confidence they enjoyed. While he embodied personal integrity, many around him danced with impunity in the sanctuary of his silence. His detachment from the messiness of realpolitik left ample room for betrayal. It is a bitter paradox: a man whose greatest strength and moral singularity became, in governance, an operational flaw.
His private life, though guarded, was not immune to public tragedy. In the early days of his second presidency, his only son, Yusuf, suffered a life-threatening power bike accident. Though he recovered, he quietly retreated from the public eye, never again returning to the spotlight. The nation watched with subdued empathy, reminded that even the highest office does not inoculate one from the vulnerabilities of life.
Buhari’s presidency was often the canvas for myths, distortions, and conspiracies. One of the most grotesque was the fabricated tale of his alleged death and replacement by a Sudanese clone named Jubril. It was a surreal episode that illuminated the fragility of truth in a nation addicted to spectacle, suspicion and superstition. Yet another fabrication, no less absurd, was the so-called third marriage, created as an online hoax. It was so elaborate that it included forged invitations, invented details, and the usual retinue of trolls and keyboard propagandists. These were not mere jokes; they were weaponized falsehoods in a political culture grown weary of truth and desperate for drama.
In governance, he faced moments of reckoning. The EndSARS protests of 2020 marked a generational confrontation that momentarily unsettled the state. What began as a peaceful movement against police brutality quickly evolved into an indictment of systemic decay. His government’s response bore the fingerprints of a military past: stern, reactive, and tragically tone-deaf. It was a painful miscalculation, one that fractured the bridge between his generation and Nigeria’s Gen. Z..
He was, in economic terms, a reformer who occasionally misfired. His attempts to redesign the national currency first in the 1980s,, then controversially in 2022, yielded mixed results. The final iteration triggered a cash crisis that upended informal markets, sparked nationwide frustration, and culminated in a public backlash that eroded much of the goodwill he had built. His passion for the oil sector was no less complicated. As Petroleum Minister in the 1970s, he supervised the building of Nigeria’s refineries. As President, he poured billions into their revival, with little to show. Paradoxically, it was under his watch that the Dangote Refinery, a monumental private-sector initiative, received decisive support. Today, that refinery stands as one of the few infrastructural achievements that may outlive the bitterness of his critics.
On food security, Buhari presided over a brief agricultural resurgence. Nigeria achieved near sufficiency in key staples, a feat driven by protectionist policies and aggressive rural development schemes. But as with many of his achievements, the absence of institutional continuity doomed the gains. His successor quickly reversed course, and the country slipped back into familiar dependency.
He inherited a hydra-headed security challenge that defied all solutions and frontally confronted the killers especially in the North-East. Boko Haram and their mutat versions across the land were ubstantially subdued.. Sadly, the issue metasticized as soon as he departed and has been qiuietly spreading out, like a stubborn wild fire……
Perhaps his most consequential political misjudgment was his refusal to groom a successor. For a man so invested in order and continuity, it remains puzzling that he did not actively shape the future of the political movement he led. His withdrawal from succession planning left a vacuum, now filled by actors with little ideological affinity to the values he espoused. In this, he forfeited what could have been his most enduring legacy: a generation of leaders forged in his ethical image.
His death, though anticipated, still leaves the nation in reflective silence. Was he a success? That question resists easy answers. The final verdict will not be delivered by partisans or pundits, but by history’s long and impartial gaze. What is clear, however, is that Muhammadu Buhari lived a life steeped in conviction. He believed deeply in the possibility of a more disciplined Nigeria, and while his tools may have faltered, the intent was never in doubt.
He did not conform. He did not pander. He did not steal. And in a polity where these virtues are in chronic short supply, that alone renders him exceptional.
Now he rests, beyond the reach of rumor, protest, and power. May his soul find peace in the quiet beyond politics, and may his life remain a reminder that public office is not an inheritance to be exploited, but a trust to be guarded with reverence. And to those who still carry the sceptre of leadership, let this be a meditation: Groom a successor. Speak the truth. Prepare for the exit. For the music always stops, the lights always dim, and only the legacy remains.
It’s nunc dimitis for the tall general. Fare thee well and fair winds.
+++++ _Celestine Mel_ writes from the FCT, Abuja.