By: Hamza Lansah Lolly
Nigeria’s former strongman and president Muhammadu Buhari has died at a clinic in London, one of his aides said Sunday. He was 82.
Mr. Buhari who left office in 2023 after serving two terms, made Nigerian political history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president at the ballot box.
France 24 reports:
He governed Nigeria with a strong hand as a military ruler in the 1980s before reinventing himself as a “converted democrat” to be elected as president decades later.
The rake-thin 82-year-old Muslim from the far north of Africa’s most populous nation made political history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting leader at the ballot box in 2015.
He unseated then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan on a vow to crack down on Nigeria’s rampant corruption and end an insurgency by Boko Haram jihadists, going on to claim re-election in 2019.
Buhari’s initial win—after three failed attempts in a country where re-election for the incumbent had been taken for granted—was seen as a rare opportunity for Nigeria to change course.
But his time at the helm failed to halt graft and insecurity, and was further dogged by economic woes, ill-health and the heavy-handed treatment of protesters.
Critics accused him of nepotism, appointing his northern kinsmen to sensitive government posts which heightened suspicion and rancour in a country where regional rivalry between the north and the south is high.
