Buhari’s Death Sad, Life Typified Not That Of A Statesman!
Monday (Afor) 14-07-2025.
The news that broke the death of the immediate-past President of Nigeria, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, 2015-2023, yesterday, Sunday (Orie) 13th July, 2025, was quite a sad one. Death, no matter what the dead will be remembered for, always leaves sorrow in the heart of very many people, especially those that enjoy ties of consangunuity with either the dead or the bereaved family.
Presidents of countries are, by virtue of their sense of patriotism, exposure and nationalistic consideration, expected to conduct themselves as Statesmen. Their candour typefies their cordinated tilt towards national cohesion, unity, peace and growth. Neither their utterances nor their conducts suggest polarisation, ethnicity or division.
A President should be so broad-minded that he or she perceives the entirety of a country holistically as his constituency. Even behind the scene, President of any country should not make statements or manifest, through body language, overt or even covert, discrimination against any section of his or her country.
In our clime, it is usually fashionable, due to man’s hypocrisy, to pour encomium on the dead, even if the dead was a villain. The black man hardly stands by the truth, and that is why his collective cumulative growth, whenever recorded, is at a snail’s speed. Instead of eulogizing the dead whose deliberate efforts were made in order to to bring about discriminatory divisive tendencies, the truth of his or her actions and intentions should be brought to the fore, as to serve as a deterrent to future leaders.
In the candid opinion of Equity Global Reporters Ltd, late Major-General President Muhammadu Buhari; GCFR, 17th December, 1942-13th July, 2025, was, to say the least, a very sectional and unpatriotic Ruler. By Global best standards, Buhari was not a Statesman. Rather, he was a parochial despotic Ruler. He was not a Democrat.
To begin with, his overthrow of the democratically elected Government of President Shehu Shagari on Saturday (Nkwo) 31st December, 1983, portrayed him in his true colour as an absolutist. He was not a democrat, by any measure, and never pretended to be one.
The Military coup of 1983, like any other undemocratic military take-over of power, was so retrogressive that it did not only truncate Nigeria’s democratic evolution but negatively affected both the unity and economy of Nigeria.
As a fulani ethnic irredentist, Major-General Buhari, after his coup of December 1983, ordered that the Head of the Democratic Government he overthrew, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, being his fulani kinsman, be kept in a house arrest while the Vice President, Dr Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme, a core Igbo Technocrat, was detained in Kirikiri Maximum Prison, just because he was Igbo, with no clearly stated offence.
At the 1985 Summit of Organization of African Union, OAU, later and currently changed to African Union, AU, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, as Nigeria’s Military Head of State, openly strongly opposed the nomination of a Nigerian Diplomat of Igbo extraction, Mr Peter Onu, who had excelled as an Acting Secretary-General of OAU, to be appointed the substantial Secretary-General of the Organization, despite the recommendation of some notable African Leaders, including President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. In his preference, Buhari successfully insisted on the appointment of a less experienced Ide Oumarou, a fulani from Niger Republic. Buhari’s choice and emphasis were geared towards his fulani tribe in Niger Republic, and not his country, Nigeria. Instead of distinguishing himself as a Statesman, he dwarfed himself as a fulani jingoist!
Buhari’s utterances in 2011, prior and preparatory to the Presidential Election of 2015, have been a source of and inspiration for violence in Nigeria. His reference to ‘dogs and baboons being soaked in their blood’ became a precipice for mass slaughtering of Ancestral Land Owners and Christians in Nigeria by his fulani kinsmen and terrorists. As President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Buhari never made any attempt to put the terrorists’ tendencies of his fulani tribesmen, majority of who are non-Nigerians, in check. Rather he mischievously, falsely and ridiculously portrayed the deliberate, well calculated and effectively executed murder of Hausa ancestral land owners, ancestral land owners in Southern Kaduna, and other parts of the Middle-Belt, including Benue, Plateau, Kogi, Taraba, and Nasarawa, who are mainly Christians, as merely ‘farmers/herders clashes or conflicts’.
All through his Presidency, there was nothing General Buhari did not contemplate just to give a strong footing to his foreign fulani kinsmen, at the risk of national security. One, he made it a deliberate policy that any fulani that stepped into Nigeria was automatically qualified to be issued with a visa. He made sure that Nigeria’s borders, especially in the North, provided easy access for his fulani kinsmen to migrate into Nigeria, unhindered. He tried to formulate a policy of RUGA ( Rural Grazing Area Settlement Initiative) for the fulani. That did not work as it was vehemently resisted by ancestral land owners of Nigeria. His attempts to sequester Nigerian River Banks and hand them over to his fulani kinsmen were also rebuffed by watchful and vigilant Ancestral Land Owners of Nigeria.
General Buhari as President of Nigeria, allowed parochialism to dictate his approach to governance. He was full of bitterness and vindictiveness. He said the Igbo (South-East) would not occupy prominent positions in his Government because they supported President Jonathan in 2015 Presidential Election, and gave him only ‘5% votes’. He made sure no Igbo Man was in his National Security Council. Thank God President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has addressed that injustice by appointing Rear Admiral Ikechukwu Emmanuel Ogalla as Chief of Naval Staff, and, so, a Member of Nigeria’s National Security Council.
The order by General Buhari to massacre hundreds of Igbo Youths at Afara-Ibeku, Umuahia in Abia State in September 2017 in an operation code named ‘Python Dance (Egwu Eke)’ in the country-home of the Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who was on a Court bail, was avoidable, especially when viewed from the angle of General Buhari tacitly supporting his fellow fulani murderers to be killing Nigerian Ancestral Land Owners and Christians, and turning them almost into pepertual Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs. Buhari was so was narrow-minded and insensitive that he openly, without any remorse, described the Igbo as ‘a dot in a circle’.
To buttress his time-held odium for the Igbo, he, using another Igbo hater and his Minister of Transportation who was once a Governor of Rivers State, Rt Hon Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, excluded the Igbo from his agenda on resuscitation of the Nigerian Railways. Instead of doing anything on the Eastern Rail line which is a major economic hub capable of generating abundant revenue for the Nigerian Railways, he opted to construct a rail line to Maradi in Niger Republic from Kano, passing through Daura in Katsina State. His hatred against the Igbo knew no bounds.
General Buhari did everything he thought a President could do in order not to allow a President of Southern extraction succeed him in 2023. Even when Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu had beaten his aspirant of choice, then President of the 9th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr Lawam, in the Presidential Primary Election of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Buhari authorised the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to redesign the country’s currency, just to frustrate Senator Tinubu. As long as Buhari was concerned, he had no regards for the reality of a North/South dichotomy.
A Statesman does not, and should not reason in such manners of thoughts and actions. It is, therefore, the wish of Equity Global Reporters Ltd that obvious but avoidable flaws and mistakes of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari will not be repeated by future Nigerian Leaders.
May his soul be accorded the appropriate place and status it rightly deserves!
Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Okwubunka of Asa and Okeamadi Gburugburu.
Managing Editor/CEO
Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
