The immediate past president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, died on Sunday, July 13, 2025. He has since been buried in conformity with the Islamic religion.
Death is a debt every mortal owes. It’s a certainty. Therefore, it’s foolhardy for any mortal to rejoice over the death of anyone.
Buhari accomplished a lot in life and died at a very ripe age. It’s befuddling to see people who have not accomplished even an insignificant percentage of what Buhari accomplished celebrating his death.
Having said that, Buhari left the stage when the ovation about the trajectory of his life was lowest. The Buhari of pre-2015 was not the Buhari of post-2023. This writer was still a child when Buhari led the country as a military head of state between January 1984 and August 1985.
Though most of his draconian policies as a military head of state must have adversely affected me, I was not of age to make an informed analysis of them. All I know about that regime is what historians documented. But, as a full-grown adult during his second coming as civilian president, one can make an objective and informed commentary on his performance without relying on historians.
According to history, the government of President Shehu Shagari was replete with corruption and inefficiency. However, toppling the government through a military coup by Buhari and his military cohorts wasn’t the better option. The government should have been overthrown through the ballot box. After all, it was the first democratic experience in the country at the time, after the first republican parliamentary experience. Had Nigeria continued with the democratic experience after the Shagari experience, the country would have gone far in democracy by now.
That’s why this writer was never in support of Buhari returning as a civilian president in all the elections conducted in the present Fourth Republic. With the benefits of history, I was never in support of Buhari being rewarded as a civilian president, having himself toppled a civilian government in the Second Republic. Nigeria is the only country in the world where a man who toppled a civilian government was rewarded as a civilian president. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo doesn’t have such an ignoble antecedent.
Buhari’s second coming as a civilian president demystified him. All the attributes supposedly ascribed to him were rubbished by him. He showed his truest colour as a civilian president. If he were incorruptible as a military head of state, it could be that his regime would be short-lived. It could also be that his then unsmiling second in command, Tunde Idiagbon, wouldn’t be a party to that. History has it that Idiagbon was more dreaded than Buhari at the time.
Buhari left Nigeria worse than he met it. It’s only an irony that his government was the worst in Nigerian history, save for one—that of his successor.
When Buhari was chronically ill in 2017 and was hospitalised for over six months in a London hospital, a very thick propaganda went viral that he had died. The propagandists said that a certain Jubril from Sudan was cloned to replace him as the president of the country. When he returned to the country and decided to operate from his Daura home as a result of what the presidency termed an invasion of rodents or rats in the presidential office, the rumour became thicker.
This writer never for once believed in that rubbish. Every discerning human being knows that that was impossible to do. How could Buhari have had a replica in faraway Sudan? The propagandists went further to say that Buhari and Jubril Al-Sudani look very much alike, but a careful observation of both individuals would reveal that Buhari was a bit taller than Jubril Al-Sudani. They also examined the ears and so forth. That was a comic relief as far as I was concerned.
How could Jubril Al-Sudani rule Nigeria from 2017 to 2023 without most Nigerians detecting it? Once a president or a governor is in office or is impeached, his vice president or the deputy governor takes over as the country’s constitution dictates. Therefore, former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo would have been sworn in as president had President Buhari died. The same thing was applicable when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died. Then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as president.
Osinbajo is a professor of law and a senior advocate of Nigeria. Are the propagandists of the tale of Jubril Al-Sudani telling us that then Vice President Osinbajo was too daft to detect that his then principal had been replaced with a cloned Jubril Al-Sudani? Are they telling us that Osinbajo, a renowned intellectual, couldn’t have tested the memory of his principal when he returned from the 2017 medical leave to know if Jubril Al-Sudani was indeed the new president? For instance, there’s no way that Jubril Al-Sudani would have known what President Buhari and Osinbajo discussed in private before he departed for medical leave. Osinbajo could have stylishly poked Jubril Al-Sudani if he could recollect their previous discussions.
Even till now, most gullible people are still spreading the rumour that President Buhari died way back in 2017 and that it was Jubril Al-Sudani who died in 2025. With this, my little analysis, as a result of space constraints, you would be convinced that Buhari never died in 2017. He died once, and that was on July 13, 2025.
Maduako writes from Owerri via ifeanyimaduako2017@gmail.com.
