According to William Shakespeare, ‘Death is a necessary end; it will come when it will come.’
July 15, 2025, General Muhammadu Buhari was committed to Mother Earth. No concrete, no cemented grave, no decoration of any kind. He had played his part both in the military and in democracy. He did his best. It now depends on individual assessment whether his best was good enough or not.
Muhammadu Buhari will now appear before his creator to give account of his stewardship while on earth. No amount of prayer or supplication can change the contents of his scorecard for God. Our prayer for the repose of his soul is grossly inconsequential because the Bible says, ‘And just as it is appointed unto mortals to die once, and after that the judgement’ (Hebrews 9:27).
This moment calls for sober reflection and a review of our struggle on earth. We struggle to amass wealth; we grab, grab, and grab as if we will take the grabs along with us when we finish our race on earth! What will you and I be remembered for?
King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, ‘Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
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Yeah, I hated all my labour that I had taken under the sun because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
And who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured and wherein I have shown myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.’ (Ecclesiastes 2:17-19)
If you think you are amassing wealth for your children and your children’s children, you better learn from the late Alao Akala, former governor of Oyo State. I read about the request of one of late Governor Alao Akala’s children in court that his (Akala’s) body be exhumed for a DNA test to be carried out to ascertain his real biological children so as to determine who deserves to share in the estate he left behind! The children refuse to allow him to rest in peace because of the wealth he accumulated on earth!
If only we always remembered the above Bible verses (Ecclesiastes 2:17-19) and that we came to this world with nothing and with nothing we shall leave, our lust for wealth acquisition, our greed, and our self-centredness would have been minimal, and our world would have been a better place to live.
Most religious leaders who are supposed to remind us of the inevitability of death and the must of our account of stewardship on earth before our creator are now forerunners in the rat race of materialism, which is why our world has become more brutish and more hostile than before.
General Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, adieu!
Rev. Akinbulu Adetunji teaches Advanced Level Economics at Bridge House College, Ikoyi
