— a meditation on memory, silence, and the promises that died with him
Death has a way of softening memory. In its silence, we often confuse legacy with pity, and nostalgia with truth. The dead can no longer defend themselves, but neither should they be shielded from the truth of their actions, not when those actions shaped the lives of millions. Now that Muhammadu Buhari has returned to the dust, it becomes even more urgent to say clearly, without equivocation, that for all the hope he once carried, for all the myth that clung to his name, President Buhari was a failure.
He arrived, or rather, returned, to the Nigerian presidency in 2015, a figure carved out of history and longing. Tired of impunity and greed, Nigerians reached backwards, summoning an ex-military ruler repackaged as a moral compass. They mistook his quietness for discipline, his aloofness for integrity, his stiffness for strength. He was seen not as a man of ideas, but a man of order. That was the promise; that Buhari, austere and incorruptible, would steady the flailing ship. What he gave instead was inertia, absence, and indifference cloaked in silence.
He promised to secure the country. He was, after all, a general. But under him, Nigeria became more unsafe than it had been in decades. The monsters we had named – Boko Haram, bandits, unknown gunmen, multiplied. Whole communities were erased in Zamfara, Kaduna, and Benue. Students were taken in droves. Trains were bombed. Farmers were unable to return to their land. And the man who wore the uniform, who once ruled by decree, governed like a spectator. He barely spoke, and when he did, his words felt distant, as if addressing a different country, one not drenched in blood.
Corruption — his second battleground — fared no better. He claimed to be above money, and perhaps he was. But being personally uninterested in theft is not the same as building systems that prevent it. Under his nose, scandals bloomed. Ministers hoarded relief funds. Parastatals became slush machines. The infamous humanitarian ministry fraud would later become a symbol of what his government allowed to thrive. Those close to him were protected. The war against corruption was selective, performative, and ultimately, empty. He did not end corruption. He gave it uniformity and structure.
But perhaps nowhere was his failure more devastating than in the economy. Under his leadership, Nigeria’s economy shrank, then collapsed. The naira lost its meaning. Fuel subsidies danced in and out of policy. Unemployment soared. Food inflation crippled families. By the time he left office, over 130 million Nigerians were classed as multidimensionally poor. His ideas, or the lack thereof, dragged the country backwards. He distrusted markets, ignored economists, and surrounded himself with yes-men. He ruled the economy like a man tending a dying fire, convinced that austerity alone could feed a nation.
And always, there was the silence. That long, weary silence. He rarely addressed the nation. He barely explained his choices. He did not mourn with the bereaved, did not sit with the angry, did not inspire the tired. He governed by retreat. The rare speeches were bland. His body language, once regarded as a prophecy, eventually meant nothing. In the final years, many Nigerians stopped expecting anything from him at all.
He also failed the nation’s soul. Nigeria is fragile, a patchwork of tensions and buried wounds. A wise leader would have worked to soothe them. But Buhari presided over one of the most ethnically skewed governments in our recent history. He ignored federal character. He treated regions like afterthoughts. He surrounded himself with familiar accents and familiar names. In doing so, he deepened the cracks, widened the mistrust. Secessionist agitations swelled. And yet, he made no honest attempt to unify or reassure.
Now that he is gone, the sanitisation has begun. Obituaries call him austere. Commentators speak of his humility. Former allies offer praise dipped in sentiment. But history does not owe the dead a favourable rewrite. It owes the living an honest accounting. Buhari was not the worst man to rule Nigeria. But he might have been the most absent. And in that absence, systems collapsed, lives were lost, and a generation became disillusioned.
There will be monuments. There will be prayers. His village will host dignitaries. His grave will be tended. However, for millions of Nigerians, especially the poor, the displaced, and the unemployed, his legacy is not one of marble or memory. It is a loss.
For the avoidance of doubt, Muhammadu Buhari failed. He failed not because he made mistakes, but because he refused to grow, to listen, to imagine. And now that he is gone, what remains is not reverence, but reckoning.
Let the record reflect that silence, even in death, cannot redeem neglect.
By Adedeji Adewumi
