Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s former president and military ruler, who died on 13 July in a London clinic after a protracted illness, was arguably unrivalled in popularity among Nigerian politicians.
Many Nigerians will remember him for different reasons but notably as an austere soldier and politician who led Nigeria as a feared military strongman in the 1980s and, three decades later, as a democratically elected president.
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The President Bola Tinubu-led federal government organised a state burial for the late leader and a special Federal Executive Council (FEC) session in his honour on 19 July.
Since his passing, his stewardship has been a subject of intense public discourse, fueled by diverse factors and interests.
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His first stint as military dictator (1983 to 1985) was characterised by human rights abuses amidst a controversial anti-corruption war. His regime detained many politicians, some without trial, for alleged corruption, many of which were never proven, and used retroactive laws to silence critics.
When he returned as Nigerian leader in 2015, Mr Buhari said he had become a reformed democrat and had learnt from his experience as military ruler. The 2015 presidential election represented a milestone when he outpolled incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and became the first opposition leader to unseat an incumbent Nigerian president since independence.
Both as a military ruler and as president, Mr Buhari cast himself as a champion of order and discipline, fighting corruption and mismanagement and trying to instill restraint in Nigeria’s rambunctious public life. These attributes came together to give Nigerians a sense of a new dawn, which they believed would address many of their concerns.
Some successes of the Buhari administration
1. Infrastructure
As president, Mr Buhari did reasonably well on infrastructure, investing over a billion dollars in three flagship projects: the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Second Niger Bridge, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway. The administration also spearheaded the completion of Standard Gauge Rails from Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna, Itakpe-Warri, and the Abuja Light Rail.
Mr Buhari completed new terminals for the international airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and Port Harcourt. His administration also reconstructed the Abuja airport runway, for the first time since the airport was built in the early 1980s.
Under Mr Buhari, the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing completed housing projects in 34 states under the National Housing Programme, with the support of state governors who provided the land. The administration also completed three hydropower projects between 2015 and 2023: the Gurara Hydropower Project (30MW), Kaduna State, which was completed and concessioned in 2020; the Kashimbila Hydropower Project (40MW), Taraba; and the Dadin-Kowa Hydropower Project (40MW), Gombe.
2. Digital Economy
Nigeria saw a record-setting ICT contribution to GDP: In the first quarter of 2020, ICT (without digital services) contributed 14.07 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, topping this in the second quarter of 2021, with 17.92 per cent contribution to GDP, and again topping this in the second quarter of 2022 with 18.44 per cent.
As of March 2023, Nigeria’s digital identity database, the National Identity Number (NIN), contained more than 97 million unique records. This has been driven by the National Policy on NIN-SIM integration, which also enhances the integrity of the NIN database. The NIN database is also now a prerequisite for applications for passports and drivers’ licenses, as well as JAMB and WAEC examinations.
3. Legislative reforms
Under Buhari, Nigeria witnessed some of its most ambitious legislative reforms in its history. Several landmark bills were either passed or amended, significantly reshaping Nigeria’s legal and policy framework in various sectors including energy, business, technology and electoral processes.
Some of the bills signed into law include 16 Constitution Amendment Bills; Not Too Young to Run Bill 2018; Repeal and Re-Enactment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), 2020; the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021; Electoral Act (Amendment) Act 2022; and the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
4. Anti-Corruption reforms and improved security in the north-east
One of the enduring legacies of Mr Buhari was the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) for revenue accountability. The TSA system is a public accounting system that enables the government to manage its finances (revenues and payments) using a single/unified account, or a series of linked accounts domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria . Mr Buhari also secured more convictions and recovered more stolen funds than his predecessors. He said he believed he would have achieved more in anti-corruption if the judiciary had been more supportive.
Also, Mr Buhari’s administration helped Nigeria avoid losing $11 billion to P&ID contract fraudsters in a gas processing scam perpetuated in 2010. A London court finally determined the case in Nigeria’s favour in October 2023. The P&ID had won the case in 2017 through an arbitration panel in the UK. But the government appealed the judgement.
Mr Buhari’s government also degraded Boko Haram insurgents, who at some point controlled about 17 local government areas in Borno State. Bomb explosions in motor parks, markets, churches, and mosques across northern Nigerian towns and villages gradually waned and virtually disappeared. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2022, deaths caused by Boko Haram dropped by 92 per cent from 2,131 in 2015 to 178 in 2021. The report acknowledged Nigeria’s “successful counter-insurgency operations targeting Boko Haram” as a leading cause of the reduction in terrorism deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa.
5. Agricultural Sector
At the inauguration in 2015, Mr Buhari stated that his goal was to revive the agricultural sector’s lost glory, which had been the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy in the 1960s before the oil boom. He recorded some significant successes within the first four years of this administration, but faced several criticisms following his approach to resolving the perennial farmer-herder clashes in the country.
Some of the agricultural successes included the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria where more than N800 billion was disbursed to more than 4 million smallholder farmers and the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), a government-to-government partnership between the Nigerian and Moroccan Governments, in December 2016 that produced 30 million 50kg bags of NPK 20:10:10 equivalent in 2020. Under Mr Buhari, Nigeria became Africa’s largest rice producer while the country’s fertiliser blending plants increased to over 70 from less than 20 when he assumed office.
Some Failures
However, even with these achievements, his eight years in office became another missed opportunity for Nigeria to rediscover itself, according to an editorial by PREMIUM TIMES.
1. Economy
Apart from the oil price crashes in 2016 and 2022, which plunged the crude-dependent economy into recession in both years, other factors also pressured Nigeria’s fiscal sustainability and made monetary policy decisions particularly difficult. From record inflation and high exchange rates to steep subsidy spending and oil theft, the country’s budgetary framework became more fragile, and the government’s need to source debt to fund its spending plan piled on the agony.
Under Mr Buhari, the Nigerian government consistently missed its revenue targets.
The unemployment and manufacturing figures were equally dismal. As president, Mr Buhari resorted to foreign and domestic borrowings to sustain governance. From a debt stock of N12.12 trillion in 2015, it steadily rose to N41.6 trillion as of December 19, 2022, according to the Debt Management Office (DMO). The situation was so bad that 96 per cent of national revenue was spent on servicing debts annually.
2. Kidnapping and terrorism
By the end of Mr Buhari’s eight-year tenure in 2023, kidnapping, terrorism, militancy in oil-rich areas and clashes between herders and farmers increased in parts of Nigeria. Data from the Nigeria Security Tracker put egregious killings from the foregoing at 63,111 persons in the eight years of his stewardship.
One of the failures of his administration was his inability to bring back some of the 270 Chibok schoolgirls abducted in April 2014 by Boko Haram. More than 90 of the girls remained unaccounted for, along with hundreds of other kidnapped school children in the northwest.
3. Unemployment and poverty rate
When President Buhari took over power in the second quarter of 2015, Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose to 9.9 per cent in the third quarter of that year from 8.2 per cent in the second quarter, according to the NBS.
Throughout his tenure, unemployment and poverty remained a disturbing feature of Nigerian life. Between May 2015 and May 2021, Nigeria’s unemployment rate more than tripled, reaching 33.3 per cent.
Similarly, the last poverty survey from the NBS under Mr Buhari showed that 63 per cent of the Nigerian population, or almost 133 million people, were multidimensionally poor. Before 2015, about 53 per cent of Nigerians were multidimensionally poor.
READ ALSO: President Buhari (1942-2025): Tears not enough, By Issa Aremu
4. Human Rights Violations
The brazen violations of citizens’ rights and liberties by the Buhari administration are well-documented. Early in his first term, the Nigerian Army massacred 350 Shiite Muslims in Zaria and secretly buried their bodies in mass graves. Also, senior army officers were illegally dismissed in one of Nigeria’s worst cases of arbitrariness and shabby treatment of its heroes.
Youth protests against police violence were brutally put down in 2020, bitterly disappointing the young Nigerians who had helped bring him back to power.
His administration was also guilty of serial disregard of court orders and violation of human rights. Ibraheem El-Zakzaky and his wife Zeenah, Omoyele Sowore, and Sambo Dasuki were among his notable victims in this regard.
5. Human Development
Between 2014 and 2019, Nigeria dropped nine places on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Global Human Development Index (HDI).
The country was ranked 152 out of 187 countries in 2014. But, in 2022, the index placed Nigeria 163rd out of 191 countries worldwide. The country scored low on all three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
Some analysts attribute his failures to not being politically savvy as well as putting too much trust in his appointees. “He tried to do his best and achieved quite a lot, but the biggest challenge, Nigeria’s political culture, was a challenge that eluded him,” Antony Goldman, a biographer, said on Sunday.
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