One of the plates on the table of this writer, displaced from time to time by other matters, was a review of the last administration. Hence, I was caught unawares, completely flat-footed, by the sudden death of Buhari on July 13, 2025. The line that rang through my mind when I heard the news was: After destroying Nigeria, Buhari went to die in London! I was saddened by the demise. I had wished the former President would live long enough to read my full review of his government. The only comfort or redeeming feature was that some eight months before the death of Buhari, I had written a summary of the locust years of his administration.
From Part 4 and Part 6 of my series, LG Autonomy: Supreme Court Got It Wrong, Completely, published in this column respectively on November 14 and November 28, 2024, are the following extracts about the Buhari administration:
(14/11/2024) “If the 11 July, 2024 verdict of the apex court, which, for all practical purposes, will end up turning the country into a unitary state, had been handed down during the last (Buhari) administration, by now, the hamlets, villages and towns in the South of Nigeria would have been subjugated by herdsmen. The then Federal Government would have (through contrived electoral cum legal crisis) used the power of ‘Federal Allocation’ to arm-twist local governments to ensure herdsmen not only have land settlements in every hamlet, village and town in the South of Nigeria but dominate them – give the herders land or we seize your council allocation! It is not easy to forget the mind-boggling scale of terror, savagery and barbarity unleashed WITH IMPUNITY by gun-toting herders across the Southern part of Nigeria during the last administration. At a time, people were afraid to go to their places of worship because of the fear of herdsmen’s attacks…
Nigeria was at various times ruled by adherents of different faiths from all sections of the country. There was no time any Head of State was accused of being a religious bigot except the last one. There may be no fear at present because the current President (Tinubu) is not a religious bigot, but there is no guarantee this polity cannot throw up another religious bigot as President in the future! Imagine such a religious bigot, armed with the judgement of the Supreme Court, having the power to seize or release monthly allocation to local councils! A red flag indeed!”
(28/11/2024) “… the Buhari administration, through its silent but loud body language, had set the stage for food crisis, as the gun-toting herdsmen, under his watch, ravaged, WITH IMPUNITY, cities, towns, villages and hamlets across the country, especially in the North Central – the food basket of the nation – maiming, killing, raping, kidnapping for ransom, displacing farmers and, in some instances, taking over their lands. At least we all can recall how many times the farms of Chief Olu Falae, a former Finance Minister, were brutally invaded by armed herders in Ondo State. Some well-established farmers in the South had to sell off their plantations because of the fear of herdsmen; many small-holder farmers, including women, across the South had to abandon their farmlands because of endless savage attacks by herders. That was before the insecurity spread, on a large scale, to the entire North or the complicit silence of the last government boomeranged!”
[In the same piece (28/11/2024), I added as well that “The gains of the railway system under the Buhari administration, especially the milestone removal of railway from the Exclusive List to the Concurrent List, should be expanded.”]
What Some Compatriots Wrote About Buhari
In an article titled, Sunday Jackson: Death Sentence A Miscarriage Of Justice, published on April 30, 2025, Uzoma Ahamefule, who wrote from Vienna, Austria, declared his verdict on the Buhari administration.
“Nigerians have lived together with herders for decades, and owing to herders’ callousness and awkward behaviours, the conflicts between them and farmers are not something new to us. But we have at least managed the situation reasonably well until Buhari came to power in 2015 and everything went out of control. Under Buhari, herders in many other African countries were encouraged to come to Nigeria, and that brought in bunches of rapists, arsonists and suspected terrorists under the guise of herders. We have also not forgotten how his administration tried to desperately force the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA), an archaic policy on Nigerians, which was vehemently rejected. But he was bent on the implementation of that policy and did not give up the idea despite the public outcry. Instead of accepting the rejection of RUGA, he rather re-strategized, retracted the name RUGA, repackaged it with another name and brought it back to Nigerians under National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP). Buhari left nothing to Nigerians than sorrow, agony and regrets. His administration was a disaster that either laid many foundations of our grief today or that took them from bad to worse.”
Writing on “The Final Hours Of Buhari…,” Dr Tunde Olusunle, author, journalist and scholar, summed up his impression in the following words: “Waking up on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 to the reality that Buhari has finally proceeded to his hometown will come as a welcome relief to several millions of Nigerians. Typically ingenious Nigerians have suggested that all our countrymen who went through the Buhari scourge unscathed should deservedly be awarded ‘Certificates of Survival!’
The Man Buhari, A Master Of Guile, A Dissimulator
Premium Times, 21 October, 2015: How Nigerian govt. is fuelling conflict between Nigeria’s Fulani herdsmen, host communities – Report
“While the attention of the Nigerian government is focused towards ending the violent Boko Haram insurgency in the country’s North East region, it has turned a blind eye to the equally devastating conflict brewing in the North Central region, a report released on Tuesday has said.
The report, titled ‘Terror in the Food Basket,’ published by SMB Intelligence, a data mining and research firm that provides analysis of Nigeria’s socio-political and economic situations, described the attitude of the Federal Government toward the Fulani herdsmen and host communities in the region as ‘head-firmly-in-the-sand.’
‘This is about the vibrant, ethnic melting point in the North Central geopolitical zone of Nigeria, an area known as the food basket of the nation, now reduced to the semblance of a war zone. In many hamlets and villages, houses are burnt or torn down, and where the houses still stand, they have been overtaken by weeds as the inhabitants have long fled. Schools and markets have been destroyed or shut down. Farms have been deserted and whole communities have been emptied. It is a story shocking in both its effect on the region and in the near total government silence…’”
A couple of years ago, I saw a video that set me thinking again. The prominent cleric, Pastor Tunde Bakare, was the running mate of Buhari in the 2011 presidential election. In the video, Bakare narrated an incident that took place in his presence in the Daura, Katsina home of Buhari. The latter had suddenly tripped and staggered, and then exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!” Bakare was shocked by that and then quipped, “General, what did you just say?” And Buhari retorted, “Do you think Jesus is for you alone?!” (or some words to that effect). I saw the video for the first time and then shook my head, wondering how Bakare was so cheaply taken in by a dissimulator and religious fundamentalist who needed to win an election in the Christian-dominated Southern Nigeria, and therefore would do anything possible to present a facade of religious tolerance! Hummnn, I fantasize Buhari’s guile: In order to convince the Christians beyond doubt, I won’t go for just a Christian as my running mate but a pastor; I know once we win the election, a Vice President is only in government but not in power!
Unlike other Muslim Heads of State, Buhari’s aides had to constantly defend him against the charge of being a religious bigot that people perceived him to be. The question would be: why did people perceive Buhari to be a religious bigot unlike other Fulani or Muslim Presidents before him?!
In conclusion, the Buhari government, between 2015 and 2023, ripped open religious and ethnic fault-lines, created new fissures in an unprecedented scale and consequently set this county back at least 50 years in terms of religious and ethnic harmony. He laid the foundation for the massacres, pogroms in the North Central that have been termed in some quarters, rightly or wrongly, as Christian Genocide. Buhari created the Frankenstein’s monster, now consuming both Christians and Muslims.
President Tinubu, from the day of his inauguration, should have come hard on the criminal herdsmen and stopped the scale of massacres in the Middle Belt. I wonder why the President did not apply the full weight of the law against herders armed with prohibited weapons from Day One in office! It was not farmer-herder clashes. The farmers stayed on their own farms/ lands; the gun-toting herders came to meet them on their own lands… No government should condone such a rape, brazen violation and crass impunity.
Now, Tinubu also has to end the banditry, insurgency and terrorism, the landmines left by Buhari, in both the North West and North East. It is not too late to do so.
The forests in the Southern Nigerian are not yet free of gun-toting herdsmen. They are not yet secure.
It is high time state police was inaugurated to end the menace of insecurity across the country. The House of Reps’ Bill on State Police provides sufficient guiderails against possible abuse. It is time for state police in Nigeria.
Follow us on all social media platforms @dailyquery for news and analyses around the globe.
