LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who led the country twice as a military head of state and a democratic president, has died aged 82, his press secretary said Sunday.
Buhari died Sunday in London, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
He first took power in Africa’s most populous nation in 1983, after a military coup, running an authoritarian regime until fellow soldiers ousted him less than 20 months later. When he was elected in 2015 on his fourth attempt, he became the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election there.
Buhari rode into power in that election on a wave of goodwill after promising to rid Nigeria of chronic corruption and a deadly security crisis. He led until 2023, during a period marked by Boko Haram’s extremist violence in the northeast and a plunging economy.
Current President Bola Tinubu in a statement described Buhari as “a patriot, a soldier, a statesman … to the very core.” Tinubu dispatched the vice president to bring Buhari’s body home from London.
Others across Nigeria remembered Buhari as a president who left the country of more than 200 million people — divided between a largely Muslim north and Christian south — more at odds than before.
For many, Buhari will be linked with memories of the 2020 youth protests against a police unit accused by rights groups and others of extrajudicial killings, torture and extortion — and the deadly shootings of demonstrators by soldiers.
“The uneven response to Buhari’s death, with muted disillusionment in some quarters and sadness in others, is a reflection of how difficult it is to unite a country and his inability to do so after decades in the public eye,” said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, an Abuja-based political scientist.
Coming from Nigeria’s north, the lanky, austere Buhari had vowed to end extremist killings and clean up rampant corruption in one of Africa’s largest economies and oil producers.
By the end of his eight-year tenure, however, goodwill toward him had faded into discontent. Insecurity had only grown, and corruption was more widespread.
Nigeria also fell into a recession amid slumping global oil prices and attacks by militants in the sprawling oil-rich Niger Delta region. The currency faltered as Buhari pursued unorthodox monetary policies to defend its fixed price to the dollar, and a massive foreign currency shortage worsened. Inflation was in the double digits.
Civil society accused him of authoritarian tendencies after protesters were killed during a protest against police brutality and over his decision to restrict access to social media, as young people vented their frustrations against economic and security problems.
Buhari’s attempts at managing the problems were complicated by prolonged medical stays abroad. His absences, with few details, created anxiety among Nigerians and some calls for him to be replaced. There also was anger over his seeking taxpayer-funded health care abroad while millions suffered from poor health facilities at home.
“I need a longer time to rest,” the president once said in a rare comment during his time away.
His presidency saw a rare bright moment in Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram — the safe return of dozens of Chibok schoolgirls seized in a mass abduction in 2014 that drew global attention.
But others among the thousands of people abducted by Boko Haram over the years remain missing — a powerful symbol of the government’s failure to protect civilians.
At the end of 2016, Buhari announced that the extremist group had been crushed, driven by the military from its remote strongholds.
“The terrorists are on the run, and no longer have a place to hide,” he boasted.
But suicide bombings and other attacks remained a threat, and the military’s fight against Boko Haram continued to be hurt by allegations of abuses by troops against civilians. In early 2017, the accidental military bombing of a displaced persons camp in the northeast killed more than 100 people, including aid workers. The U.N. refugee chief called the killings “truly catastrophic.”
As Nigeria’s military reclaimed more area from Boko Haram’s control, a vast humanitarian crisis was revealed. Aid groups began alerting the world to people dying from malnutrition, even as government officials denied the crisis and accused aid groups of exaggerating the situation to attract donations.
The extremist threat and humanitarian crisis in the northeast — now exacerbated by Trump administration aid cuts — continues today.
Years earlier, as Nigeria’s military ruler, Buhari oversaw a regime that executed drug dealers, returned looted state assets and sent soldiers to the streets with whips to enforce traffic laws. With oil prices slumping and Nigerians saying foreigners were depriving them of work, the regime also ordered an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants to leave the country.
Meanwhile, government workers arriving late to their offices were forced to perform squats in a “war against indiscipline” that won many followers. Buhari’s administration, however, was also criticized by rights groups and others for detaining journalists critical of the government and for passing laws that allowed indefinite detention without trial.
As he pursued the presidency decades later, Buhari said he had undergone radical changes and that he now championed democracy. But some of his past stances haunted him, including statements in the 1980s that he would introduce Islamic law across Nigeria.
