A new video shared late Sunday by former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, shows the late former President Muhammadu Buhari explaining why he joined the army immediately after leaving secondary school.
In the video, Mr Buhari says he often laughed whenever he remembered the circumstances, breaking into guffaws several times as he shared his recollections in Hausa with Mr Pantami, who inquired about his military life.
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Mr Pantami said the interview is one of the most recent unpublished private ones he conducted with the late former president.
Mr Buhari died on Sunday at a London hospital, where he had been receiving treatment since April. He was 82.
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“After I completed nine years of primary and secondary school in Katsina, I decided to join the army to run away from a marriage arranged by my uncle and my mother,” Mr Buhari said.
“One day, I met someone on the road who happened to be my uncle, whom I had never met before. Seeing my face and the resemblance to my late father, the man asked me to take him to my mother. I hesitated and showed him the direction, but he frowned at me and said I should escort him to her, which I did.
“I took him to the house, and I told my mother you have a guest. Then, she told me he is my uncle, he shared the same father with your late father, and he has proposed a lady for you to marry”, Mr Buhari said.
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“After I finished secondary school, I was offered employment as a cooperative head of department, with a motorcycle and attractive monthly remuneration. The plan was for me to get married and stay here until I die (laughs). I decided to run away and join the army.
“It was a very funny incident, because my mother insisted that she wanted to see her grandchildren from me, being her lastborn. But I was sceptical of early marriage to start bearing multiple children. Later on, I repeatedly begged my mother’s forgiveness for the disappointment I caused her over the failed family marriage,” Mr Buhari said.
Buhari’s military career
Mr Buhari lost his father at the age of four. He was his father’s 23rd child and his mother’s 13th. After six years of secondary school in Katsina city, he was admitted to the Nigerian military training college. He joined the Nigerian Army shortly after independence in 1960.
Mr Buhari undertook several military training home and abroad. He was trained in the United Kingdom from 1962 to 1963. From 1979 to 1980, at the rank of colonel, he attended the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the United States, and gained a master’s degree in Strategic Studies. Since then, he steadily rose to the ranks.
In his mid-30s, he served as the federal commissioner for petroleum and natural resources under Olusegun Obasanjo’s military leadership in 1976.
READ ALSO: Mamman Daura, Buhari’s nephew, admitted in London hospital
Under a military government, Mr Buhari had risen to become military governor of the old Borno State, now comprising four states. At the end of 1983, his group in the military toppled President Shehu Shagari, and Mr Buhari, then a major-general, became the country’s military ruler.
But in his own narration, he did not participate in the coup. Mr Buhari ruled for 20 months, a period remembered for a campaign against indiscipline and corruption, and for human rights abuses.
After three unsuccessful attempts, Mr Buhari was elected in 2015 as Nigeria’s first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent. In 2019, he was re-elected to another four-year term.
He was Nigeria’s second-longest-serving leader, having served for nine years and seven months as a military ruler and democratically elected president.
After running away from a planned family marriage, Mr Buhari subsequently married twice, first to Safinatu Yusuf from 1971 to 1988, from his home state, and then in 1989 to Aisha Halilu, from Adamawa State, who survived him. He had 10 children.
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