In life as in death, controversy trails Buhari (1)

‘Buhari’s presidency was a colossal disaster. He left behind a country poorer, more fractured, and more despairing than he found it. Let those who govern today and tomorrow draw the right lesson: Power is transient, graves are inevitable, and history is unkind to leaders who squander their people’s hopes. At the end, it all fits into a box. The only thing that outlives us is the quality of the lives we touched — or, in Buhari’s case, the lives he scarred.‘

 Hours after the death of former President Muhammadu Buhari, my phone rang and a friend from the United States of America asked, “Ngbo, was Buhari cloned?“ I heard other voices around her. Obviously they were arguing over whether Buhari was Jubril of Sudan or not; and whether he died a long time ago but his clone was what continued to rule Nigeria in the guise of the one-time Military Head of State who was elected as civilian president in 2015. Jubril of Sudan was a story – or rumour – that broke out in 2018 during Buhari’s first term in office. Buhari was said to have died the year before but one Jubril, a citizen of Sudan with an uncanny Buhari resemblance, was said to have been cloned to replace the real Buhari. Opinion was sharply divided over this. Many believed while others found the story preposterous. Although I had read David M. Rorvik’s book, “In his image: The cloning of a man” decades back as an undergraduate student at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), I couldn’t bring myself to believe the rumour. The Jubril of Sudan controversy raged for years before it died down only to resurface at the demise of Buhari – real or Jubril!

Buhari or Jubril of Sudan?

Was Buhari cloned? The truth may take some time to emerge – just as the truth about rats driving the then president out of his Presidential villa office recently emerged as a white lie, as they say, told to cover up for the President’s incessant ill-health. Garba Sheu, one of Buhari’s spokespersons, made the confession. If they could tell such blatant lies, then, you cannot in good conscience put anything past them. In some other countries, a president falling sick is not a state secret, and disclosing the nature of sickness is not seen or treated as a treasonable felony case. Buhari might not have been Jubril of Sudan, but his “body parts” might have undergone extensive panel-beating. Heart, kidney and other transplants, even genitals grafting are common occurrences these days. Thanks to the phenomenal advancement in medicine. A senior professional colleague told me that Buhari at some point got poisoned and blood had to be drained out of him and replaced 17 times!

I once had a Volvo car that carried the engine of Toyota and the carburetor of Mazda! Our mechanics can be that ingenious! Who knows whether Buhari carried some body parts of Jubril of Sudan – and who knows what those parts were! The established body system is known to behave strangely to – or totally reject – some transplants and graftings. The transformative process is also said to be challenging, even traumatic, in some instances.

Divorce or no divorce?

As if Jubril of Sudan was not enough controversy, celebrated columnist, Farooq Kperogi, added another dimension that must have stunned many, but which would not have been out of character for Buhari. Kperogi, brandishing circumstantial evidence, reported that the former President was divorced from his outspoken wife, Aisha before his death. Kperogi has stylishly recanted; he apologised to Aisha while not exactly denying the veracity of his story. He only regretted that the timing was inappropriate, and also that his source never intended the “world exclusive” for public consumption. Rumours were rife at a point that there was a woman whom Buhari had made a Minister of the Federal Republic that was being referred to as the then president’s unofficial second wife. A formal Nikhai date was even rumoured in the popular press before it was later cancelled there! The liaison between Buhari and the said Minister was said to have soured relations between him and Aisha.

Of course, there were other infractions: The First Lady publicly railed against the Presidency cabals whom he accused of hijacking her husband’s government, allegedly turning Buhari himself into a stranger in his own government. She said these were people who had advised Buhari against running for office the fourth time; who mocked him for deciding to run, but who turned round to hijack the government once he won and crowded out those who genuinely had worked for Buhari to become president. There was an occasion when a “rofo-rofo” with a member of the cabal right in the hallowed precincts of the Presidential villa filtered into the media. Some Buhari family members were also said to loathe her. She often canvassed positions that were antithetical to those of the cabal members running her husband’s government while Buhari himself was an absentee president.

The story is told of how Buhari sacked his first wife: After he was overthrown in a military coup in August 1985, Buhari was put under house arrest. “Peace-makers” then approached his wife to beg the new Head of State, self-styled military President Ibrahim Babangida, for her husband’s release – which she did. As soon as he regained his freedom, Buhari allegedly sent the woman packing for embarking on that singular act!

Buhari: Twice a ruler, twice a ruiner

Despite the snippets that I fired in last week’s “Three deaths: Gainers and losers”, my esteemed readers still insisted they would want a fuller treatment on Buhari. Well, in the past two weeks I have read two write-ups on the same subject that approximate my own views. Today, I bring one of them here, which is the Editorial of NewsScroll, an online publication, for your enjoyment! Titled “Buhari: Twice a ruler, twice a ruin”, it runs thus:

“Nigeria’s immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, died in London at the age of 82. As expected, condolence messages are flowing from those who benefitted from his reign of ruins and those who are just like him. But history, thankfully, does not mourn with them. History keeps receipts!

“Twice in his lifetime, Buhari ascended to the throne of Nigeria’s highest office — first as a military dictator in 1983 and later as a twice-elected civilian president beginning in 2015. Twice he left the country in tatters, worse than he had met it. If there is any justice left in the moral economy of nations, it is that death, that great equaliser, has found him far from the land he so poorly governed — in a foreign clinic he could have replicated for his own people but never did!

The promise that became a plague

“Buhari rode into Aso Rock in 2015 on a white horse of moral rectitude. Nigerians, weary of endemic graft and yearning for a clean break, gambled on his famed ascetic lifestyle and military bearing to whip the country into shape. They got instead a tired, aloof man who dozed through national crises while his cabal ran riot, looting, dividing, and hollowing out the country.

“Under Buhari, Nigeria experienced two recessions, the steepest fall in per capita income in over a quarter of a century, a debt balloon that left future generations shackled, and an economy so fragile it buckled at every global tremor. From $3,265 GDP per capita under Goodluck Jonathan in 2014, Nigeria slid all the way to a paltry $807 by 2025, effectively erasing decades of hard-won gains. This was not merely a statistical regression — it meant more children out of school, more families slipping into multidimensional poverty, and more young people risking everything on the high seas of Mediterranean uncertainty.

“Buhari’s record on insecurity, the very plank of his campaign, is a monument to national tragedy. When he took over, the primary threat was Boko Haram hoisting flags in a few northeastern towns. By the time he left, Nigeria had become a vast theatre of blood: terrorists in the northwest collecting taxes and conferring chieftaincy titles, bandits kidnapping schoolchildren in droves, and herdsmen massacring villagers in the north-central as if on seasonal rotation. The Abuja-Kaduna train attack, mass abductions from primary schools to polytechnics, and farmers paying levies to terrorists just to till their ancestral land, all flourished under his negligent watch.

“Even the once largely non-violent agitations in the South-East were mishandled into a full-scale violent rebellion. Buhari’s government demonstrated neither the tact of intelligence-led de-escalation nor the moral clarity to heal national wounds. Instead, it jailed Nnamdi Kanu in defiance of court orders and let a crisis fester into carnage.

Corruption: From crusade to cliché

“Perhaps nowhere did Buhari’s hypocrisy burn brighter than in his so-called anti-corruption war. Nigerians were told corruption would kill the country if the country did not kill corruption. Instead, under Buhari, corruption simply changed uniforms. The EFCC became an instrument for settling political scores. Billions flagged by the Auditor-General vanished into the ether, and an Audit Bill that could have strengthened oversight twice died on Buhari’s desk without assent. Under his nose, Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption magically doubled to 65 million litres even as factories shut and joblessness soared — a heist disguised as subsidy that bled the treasury. And when accused politicians crossed over to his ruling APC, prosecution ceased as if by papal indulgence. The message was clear: loyalty, not integrity, secured immunity.

Civilian dictator and his choir of sycophants

“Buhari’s government was not merely incompetent; it was contemptuous of dissent and allergic to scrutiny. His media handlers turned state communication into a circus of insults and juvenile name-calling, branding critics as “wailers” while ignoring legitimate anguish. The regime weaponised regulatory agencies against independent media, stifled online voices, and ran a digital troll army that barked down questions it could not answer.

“The ultimate tragedy is that Buhari, in both military and civilian form, never outgrew his authoritarian instincts. His personal frugality did not translate into national prudence, and his rigidity became a hazard to a complex, diverse country needing supple, inclusive leadership. He promised to be a converted democrat, but ruled more like a democratized autocrat.

A lesson, not a legacy

“As Nigeria buries Buhari, it must resist the habit of canonising leaders simply because they are no longer alive. Buhari’s presidency was a colossal disaster. He left behind a country poorer, more fractured, and more despairing than he found it. Let those who govern today and tomorrow draw the right lesson: Power is transient, graves are inevitable, and history is unkind to leaders who squander their people’s hopes. At the end, it all fits into a box. The only thing that outlives us is the quality of the lives we touched — or, in Buhari’s case, the lives he scarred.

“Goodbye to Muhammadu Buhari. May his memory forever instruct us on the perils of mistaking sternness for competence and sanctimony for integrity. Twice he ruled. Twice he failed. Let Nigeria not fail again by forgetting.”

Well said!

READ ALSO: What can you remember General Muhammadu Buhari for?