LAGOS: The passing of former President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday has triggered a wave of glowing tributes from Nigeria’s political class. On television, in newspapers, and across social media, he has been hailed as a disciplined patriot, “a selfless leader, and a man of integrity.
But behind the flood of praise lies a harsher truth one that millions of Nigerians lived through,and are unwilling to forget.
This was the same Buhari who fought in the Nigeria-Biafra war as a military officer, took power in a 1983 coup, and returned decades later as a civilian president in 2015—riding a wave of hope and promises of change.
Instead, his years in office brought widespread hardship, economic collapse, and deepening insecurity.
For two terms, Buhari served both as President and Minister of Petroleum. Under his leadership, the oil sector became opaquer and more dysfunctional.
Subsidy frauds escalated, refineries remained comatose, and corruption thrived. Fuel scarcity returned, the naira tumbled, and Nigerians bore the consequences.
One of the most symbolic failures of his administration was the unveiling of Nigeria Air a supposed national airline launched with great fanfare and a borrowed aircraft. It turned out to be an illusion. No planes were purchased. No airline took off. Just another expensive mirage.
In a controversial move, Buhari approved a $1.9 billion railway project not to connect Nigerian cities but to link Nigeria with Niger Republic. Meanwhile, the South-South region, which generates over 90% of Nigeria’s oil revenue, remained without a single federal railway. For many, it was a glaring case of misplaced priorities and regional neglect.
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Throughout his presidency, herdsmen attack devastated farming communities across the Middle Belt, South-West, South-East, and South-South.
Farmers abandoned their land. Food prices soared. Lives were lost. Yet Buhari himself a Fulani remained silent, offering neither comfort nor solutions.
His silence was just as deafening during the 2020 #EndSARS protests, when young Nigerians demanding police, reform were shot at the Lekki Toll Gate while waving the national flag. Buhari never visited the families. He never said their names. He simply moved on.
Though praised as incorruptible, Buhari maintained homes in Daura, Kaduna, and London. He routinely flew to the UK for medical care even for minor health issues while most Nigerians couldn’t afford basic treatment at home.
His children studied abroad while Nigerian universities crumbled from strikes and underfunding.
Even General Ibrahim Babangida who ousted Buhari in 1983 has offered kind words in death. But everyday Nigerians, who lived through the grinding poverty and insecurity of his rule, are far less sentimental.
Respecting the dead is human. But so is telling the truth.
Let the powerful mourn their general. But the people will remember the hunger, the silence, the broken promises, the fake airline, the blood at Lekki, and the railway to Niger Republic while the Niger Delta was ignored.
Buhari is gone.
But the truth must not go with him.
