For eight uninterrupted years, Muhammadu Buhari stood at the head of Nigeria’s political sphere like a colossus. He served as President for two terms and made many promises, most of which he never fulfilled. During that period, Nigerians who voted for Buhari in the 2015 presidential election realised they had empowered a pretender as captain of their ill-fated airplane. But that late revelation did not prevent them from boarding an aircraft headed to nowhere, or, as some people suggested, an aircraft headed to the land of perfidy.

Everything you never imagined could happen in Nigeria occurred during Buhari’s presidency. Insecurity grew. Law and order collapsed. Infrastructure decayed and was abandoned. Corruption was widespread. University education was hindered. A government that promised to enhance the quality of university education but denied the universities funds and infrastructure can only be seen as a bully and a certified scammer.

Before and during his presidency, Buhari portrayed himself as a statesman, an austere man, a deeply religious Muslim, a disciplinarian and a man ruled by his conscience. With time, some of these personal qualities were exposed to be false. Buhari was not even an effigy of all that he claimed to be. In eight years, he governed like a despot rather than a democrat that his handlers claimed he was.

With time, Buhari’s actions, policies and pronouncements exposed him as a hardened separatist, a bigoted man with a one-track mind who was obsessed with advancing his narrow-minded politics of ethnicity, regionalism and religion. These are not the hallmarks of a statesman.

It is said that a statesman should live above constricted points of view. It is also said that a true statesman should work to unify a fractured country such as Nigeria that comprises multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious groups. Buhari made the situation worse than it was when he was elected President.

One year after Buhari’s election as President, Nigerians realised that their socioeconomic conditions and standard of living had plummeted below what they ever imagined. Millions of people lived and still live below the poverty line. In the last fortnight before the expiry of his second term, Buhari made some questionable but hurried, if not frenetic, and bizarre decisions and appointments that reverberated across the country and shocked even those close to him. He presented urgent bills to the National Assembly that the lily-livered parliamentarians and sycophants approved quickly without scrutiny.

Before he resurrected in 2015 for a fourth attempt at winning what appeared to be an elusive presidential election, having failed awfully in previous elections, Buhari carried the image of an enigmatic politician. Many Nigerians wondered openly whether Buhari had the capacity to lead or govern effectively because of his track record of taking impulsive decisions. His views on national issues were as bigoted and provocative as they were insulting. He carried with him a special hatred for the people of the South-East region.

On various occasions, Buhari sent fully armed soldiers and other security officials to hunt members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), an organisation that Buhari hated with a passion. During his scorched-earth policy and campaigns against the South-East, many innocent men, women, children and infants were murdered.

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Unhappy with his high-handed actions in the South-East that were designed to destroy the people and the economy of the region, Buhari proceeded to proscribe IPOB, even when well-known terror groups such as Boko Haram and bandits that established bases in the northern part of the country were left to operate freely, to kidnap innocent citizens and to engage in hit-and-run operations.

The leader of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, was freed by a court but Buhari’s government defied the court judgment and kept Kanu in jail.

Buhari showed no sentiments or expressed sympathies for the families that lost their beloved members owing to his unwarranted campaigns of destruction in the South-East region.

Even before he became President in 2015, Buhari had shown on various occasions his narrowminded politics and viewpoints. His typical response to scandals was that he was not aware or that he would respond vigorously. It was this same apathetic language that Buhari used boringly to pour cold water on allegations of corruption levelled at senior members of his government between 2015 and 2023. Paradoxically, some of those government officials were later relieved of their jobs. Until Buhari’s second term expired last week, no formal charges were brought by his government against most of those men because, in Buhari’s eyes, he could not see and certainly did not believe his officials and kinsmen could be guilty of corruption as charged.

Under Buhari, government paid lip service to the fundamental elements of democracy, such as respect for human rights, press freedom and respect for civil rights. His first and second terms were marked by poor leadership and poor governance.

Unfortunately, people judged Buhari of 2015 with the Buhari they knew or experienced 31 years earlier in 1984. In politics, it is said that what you see is what you get. In Buhari’s case, what we saw in 2015 was not even a prototype of the Buhari the country experienced during his military dictatorship in the mid-1980s.

No sooner was he elected in 2015 than the strange aspects of his character and his prejudices began to be revealed. His political appointments were lopsided. He believed that only members of his ethnic group, in particular his kith and kin, were fit to serve the nation. For many years, Nigerians were informed that the Federal Character principle was an effective policy to unify a country of disparate peoples who hailed from diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities.

During the months following Buhari’s election in 2015, the Federal Character mantra was downgraded, twisted and marketed as a bad idea. The argument was that only the President had the capacity to determine qualified Nigerians who would serve in his government. With that twisted argument, the Federal Character principle was abandoned. We were informed that Buhari’s appointments were made in the national interest and that top-level officials who received the nod to serve in Buhari’s government were educated, experienced, tested, skilled and highly qualified.

One month to the end of his second term, Buhari experienced a mental transformation that softened his heart. That transformation compelled him to make an open appeal for forgiveness from the families and individuals his policies and actions may have hurt deeply or affected directly, fatally or grievously. He told the nation that he had accepted, in good faith, all criticisms of his government, including his uninspiring style of leadership, his poor governance of the country and irresponsibility by his senior officials.

Speaking in late April 2023 at an occasion that marked or heralded his final visit as President, on the Eid-el-Fitr holiday before handing over power, Buhari appealed to Nigerians to forgive him, saying “all those that I have hurt, I ask that they pardon me.”

Forgiveness must be sincere. And it must develop from a contrite heart. Surely, many Nigerians are yet to be persuaded that Buhari’s appeal for forgiveness emerged from a remorseful heart. Time shall tell.