JUSTICIA on The Southerner Newspaper
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Maigaskiya was saddled with the responsibility of managing the Petroleum Trust Fund PTF. But Obasanjo denounced the PTF when he returned to power in 1999 as a government within a government. The PTF was said to be a cesspit of corruption as the plutocrats recruited to run the outfit by Buhari ran it to service their interests.
Buhari who was said not be directly involved once again escaped uncorrupted, thus reinforcing his esteemed moniker. However, when Obasanjo half-heartedly put together the Oputa Commission to investigate human rights violation that characterized the period of military rule and the political crises that precipitated the civil war which claimed millions of lives, polarised the country and the society thoroughly divided till date, Maigaskiya and Maradona promptly went to court to shut it down.
The duo escaped the truth, the burden of redemption and rectitude, and suspended the prospect of national healing and reconciliation.
As a born-again politician or if you will, democrat, Buhari wore two caps. He pursued power with the doggedness of a man who believed it was his divine inheritance. He contested the presidential elections three times and lost, fought at the election tribunals up to the Supreme Court without success.
Just when he was going to give up, help came. Along came Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu and All Progressive Congress APC. And eight years as President of Nigeria and Commander- in- Chief of the Armed Forces. What a man of destiny.
Those close to him vow he smiled a lot, that he was humane, jovial and patriotic. They insist he was clean, uncorrupted and beyond reproach, highlighting his plethoral of infrastructure built under his administration and the acknowledgement of the victory of his former enemy, M K O Abiola in the June 12, 1993 Presidential election which was annulled by Maradona and his cohorts.
They insist he was a patriot who did his best for Nigeria. His adversaries insists he pursued power with the doggedness of a despot, threatening blood and mayhem if he was denied unfairly. And when he got it, he could not exercise power because he was largely aloof and weakened by illness, while a clique at the presidency hijacked power and left behind a bewildered nation.
When President Muhammadu Buhari died at a London hospital on the 13th July 2025 at a ripe old of 82 years, the question naturally was what legacy did he leave behind? He had through his wife Hajia Aisha Buhari made what appeared to be a death bed appeal to the Nigerian people to forgive his shortcomings, and in one video, he actually used the word, ‘’pardon’’.
Is it really possible to critically examine Buhari’s legacy as a military ruler in isolation of his three decades pursuit of power and eventually capturing it under a democratic process which he despised and demonized three decades earlier? I think not. He claimed he belong to no one and to all. I believe he was one and the same. He was a complex man who engaged his destiny vigourously.
Could it be his love for Nigeria was like an unrequited love affair? He belonged to and was of the military culture, which molded him and which drove his passion and actions. He was, at the end, a human being who sought for forgiveness and pleaded to be pardoned, perhaps for the crimes committed while in power, and for the burden of not embracing the truth,which was his public personae.
