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The President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR was born 17 December 1942, a retired Major General in the Nigerian Army who was Head of State of Nigeria from 31 December 1983 to 27 August 1985, after taking power in a military coup d’état. The term Buharism is ascribed to the Buhari military government.
He contested for the office of President in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections. In December 2014, following the merger of all major opposition parties, he emerged as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the March 2015 elections. Buhari won the 2015 general election, defeating the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. When he takes office on 29 May 2015 as scheduled it will mark the first time in Nigeria’s history that an incumbent elected President will peacefully transfer power to an elected leader of the opposition.
Buhari has stated that he takes responsibility for whatever happened under his watch during his military rule, saying that he cannot change the past, but he can affect the present and secure the future. He also describes himself as a “converted democrat”.
Early Life
Muhammadu Buhari was born on 17 December 1942, in Daura, Katsina State, to his father Adamu and mother Zulaihat. He is the twenty-third child of his father. Buhari was raised by his mother, after his father died when he was about four years old.
He attended primary school in Daura and Mai’adua before proceeding to Katsina Model School in 1953, and Katsina Provincial Secondary School (now Government College Katsina) from 1956 to 1961. He then joined the Nigerian Military Training School in Kaduna, where his military career began.
Military Career
Buhari joined the Nigerian Army in 1961, when he attended the Nigerian Military Training College in February 1964, it was renamed the Nigerian Defence Academy) in Kaduna. From 1962 to 1963, he underwent officer cadets training at Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot in England.
In January 1963, Buhari was commissioned as second lieutenant, and appointed Platoon Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion in Abeokuta, Nigeria. From November 1963 to January 1964, Buhari attended the Platoon Commanders’ Course at the Nigerian Military Training College, Kaduna. In 1964, he facilitated his military training by attending the Mechanical Transport Officer’s Course at the Army Mechanical Transport School in Borden, United Kingdom.
From 1965 to 1967, Buhari served as Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion. He was appointed Brigade Major, Second Sector, First Infantry Division, April 1967 to July 1967.
Buhari was made Brigade Major of the Third Infantry Brigade, July 1967 to October 1968 and Brigade Major/Commandant, Thirty-first Infantry Brigade, 1970 to 1971.
Buhari served as the Assistant Adjutant-General, First Infantry Division Headquarters, from 1971 to 1972. He also attended the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, India, in 1973.
From 1974 to 1975 Buhari was Acting Director of Transport and Supply at the Nigerian Army Corps of Supply and Transport Headquarters.
He was also Military Secretary at the Army Headquarters from 1978 to 1979 and was a member of the Supreme Military Council from 1978 to 1979.
From 1979 to 1980, at the rank of Colonel, Buhari (class of 1980) attended the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the United States, and gained a Masters Degree in Strategic Studies. Upon completion of the on-campus full-time resident program lasting ten months and the two-year-long, distance learning program, the United States Army War College (USAWC) college awards its graduate officers a master’s degree in Strategic Studies.
Other roles include: General Officer Commanding, 4th Infantry Division, Aug. 1980 – Jan. 1981, General Officer Commanding, 2nd Mechanized Infantry Division, Jan. 1981 – October 1981 and General Officer Commanding, 3rd Armed Division Nigerian Army, October 1981 – December 1983. He was said to be among series of coup d’états in 1966, 1975 and 1983.
In August 1975, after General Murtala Mohammed took power that year, he appointed Buhari as Governor of the North-Eastern State, to oversee social, economic and political improvements in the state.
In March 1976, the Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, appointed Buhari as the Federal Commissioner (position now called Minister) for Petroleum and Natural Resources. When the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was created in 1976, Buhari was also appointed as its Chairman, a position he held until 1978. During his tenure as Commissioner, 2.8 billion Naira allegedly went missing from the accounts of the NNPC in Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. Former President Ibrahim Babangida allegedly accused Buhari of being responsible for this fraud.
However, according to the Modalities for Coordinating Nigeria’s Anti-Corruption Strategies, Constructive Engagement Vol. 1 No. 1 (2009), in 1983, Shagari administration inaugurated the Crude Oil Sales Tribunal of Inquiry, headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe, to investigate allegations of N2.8 billion misappropriation from the NNPC account. The tribunal however found no truth in the allegations even though it noticed some lapses in the NNPC accounts.
Head of State (1983) Economic Policy
In order to reform the economy, as Head of State, Buhari started to rebuild the nation’s social-political and economic systems, along the realities of Nigeria’s austere economic conditions. The rebuilding included removing or cutting back the excesses in national expenditure, obliterating or removing completely corruption from the nation’s social ethics, shifting from mainly public sector employment to self-employment. Buhari also encouraged import substitution industrialisation based to a great extent on the use of local materials and he tightened importation.
Buhari broke ties with the International Monetary Fund, when the fund asked the government to devalue the naira by 60%. However, the reforms that Buhari instigated on his own were as or more rigorous as those required by the IMF.
On 7 May 1984, Buhari announced the country’s 1984 National Budget. The budget came with a series of complementary measures: A temporary ban on recruiting federal public sector workers, raising of interest rates, halting capital projects, prohibition of borrowing by state governments, 15 percent cut from Shagari’s 1983 Budget, realignment of import duties, reducing the balance of payment deficit by cutting imports and it also gave priority to the importation of raw materials and spare parts that were needed for agriculture and industry.
Other economic measures by Buhari took the form of counter trade, currency change, price reduction of goods and services.
Foreign Policy
Buhari’s military government continued largely with the foreign policy it inherited from Shehu Shagari. In January 1984, in his new year broadcast speech, Buhari stated that he would maintain and enhance diplomatic relations with all countries and international organisations such as the OAU, UN, OPEC, ECOWAS and the Commonwealth of Nations. He also stated that he would honor all treaty obligations entered into by previous governments, which he did.
Buhari’s foreign policy also focused on Africa, mostly Nigeria’s neighbors due to financial commitments.
Presidential Campaigns and Elections
In 2003, Buhari ran for office in the presidential election as the candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP). He was defeated by the People’s Democratic Party nominee, President Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ, by a margin of more than eleven million votes.
On 18 December 2006, Gen. Buhari was nominated as the consensus candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party. His main challenger in the April 2007 polls was the ruling PDP candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, who hailed from the same home state of Katsina. In the election, Buhari officially took 18% of the vote against 70% for Yar’Adua, but Buhari rejected these results.
In March 2010, Buhari left the ANPP for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a party that he had helped to found. He said that he had supported foundation of the CPC “as a solution to the debilitating, ethical and ideological conflicts in my former party the ANPP”.
Buhari was the CPC Presidential candidate in the 16 April 2011 general election, running against incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
However, he remains a “folk hero” to some for his vocal opposition to corruption. Buhari won 12,214,853 votes, coming in second to the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP, who polled 22,495,187 votes and was declared the winner.
2015 Presidential Election
In the run up to the 2015 Presidential elections, the campaign team of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan asked for the disqualification of General Buhari from the race, claiming that he is in breach of the Constitution. According to the fundamental document, in order to qualify for election to the office of the President, an individual must be “educated up to at least School certificate level or its equivalent”. Buhari has failed to submit any such evidence, claiming that he lost the original copies of his diplomas when his house was raided following his overthrow from power in 1985.
Buhari ran in the 2015 Presidential election as a candidate of the All Progressives Congress party. His platform was built around his image as a staunch anti-corruption fighter and his incorruptible and honest reputation. However, Buhari stated in an interview that he would not probe past corrupt leaders and that he would give officials who stole in the past amnesty, insofar as they repent.
In January 2015, the insurgent group “The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta” (MEND) endorsed Buhari in the Presidential race, saying he is the best candidate to lead the country.
Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign was advised, briefly, by former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod and his AKPD consultancy.
In February 2015, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo quit the ruling PDP party and threw his support behind the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket.
On March 31, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan called Buhari to offer his concession and congratulations for his election as president; he assumes office on 29 May 2015.
