Muhammadu Buhari

Major General Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR (17 December 1942 - 13 July 2025) was a Nigerian military officer and politician who served as Military Head of State from 31 December 1983 to 27 August 1985 and as democratically elected President of Nigeria from 29 May 2015 to 29 May 2023 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). His political career spanned five decades and included service as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources (1976-1978) under General Olusegun Obasanjo, Governor of the North-Eastern State, and Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under General Sani Abacha (1994-1999). Buhari built much of his civilian political brand on a reputation for personal austerity and an anti-corruption posture, campaigning unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011 before defeating incumbent Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 - the first time in Nigeria's history that an opposition candidate unseated a sitting president at the ballot box. He was re-elected in 2019.

Despite that ascetic image, Buhari attracted sustained editorial scrutiny over four distinct matters that, while never producing a criminal conviction, are documented in the credible Nigerian press and warrant inclusion in any serious accountability ledger. First, his stewardship of the PTF (1994-1998/99) became the subject of long-running allegations after independent consultants commissioned during the Obasanjo administration concluded that of approximately N181 billion that accrued to the Fund between July 1994 and July 1999, as much as N25,758,532,448 had either been stolen or improperly expended - principally through the Afri-Project Consortium (APC) management consultancy contract, with reports citing inflated unit prices for spectacle frames, ambulances and pharmaceutical drugs. Buhari denied wrongdoing, insisting 'my integrity is intact,' and former President Obasanjo publicly stated in 2015 that on reviewing the probe report he 'found nothing unpleasant' incriminating Buhari personally, attributing irregularities to inconsistent pricing rather than personal looting. The matter never proceeded to arraignment.

Second, on 14 April 2022, sitting as President in Council, Buhari granted presidential pardons to former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye and former Taraba State Governor Jolly Nyame - both convicted under Justice Adebukola Banjoko in 2018 on 27-count corruption indictments involving the misappropriation of N1.16 billion and N1.6 billion respectively. The pardons, part of a tranche of 159 clemency recipients approved by the Council of State, were justified by the Presidency on grounds of 'life-threatening ill-health' and humanitarian considerations, but drew sharp condemnation from the Nigerian Bar Association, the EFCC, senior advocates Femi Falana SAN and J.S. Okutepa SAN, and civil-society groups who argued the action eviscerated Buhari's signature anti-corruption narrative. Third, the controversial 2022-2023 naira redesign / cash-swap policy was widely alleged to have disproportionately disadvantaged opposition campaigns and benefited the APC; sixteen state governments ultimately sued at the Supreme Court, which on 3 March 2023 declared the policy unconstitutional for non-compliance with the three-month statutory notice requirement. Fourth, successive Auditor-General of the Federation reports flagged record-breaking non-compliance by MDAs during Buhari's tenure (324 MDAs failing to submit accounts in 2016, 215 in 2015) and the Senate later complained that the President had failed to act on audit reports indicting officials in fraudulent expenditure exceeding N1 trillion.

Buhari's death in a London hospital on 13 July 2025, aged 82, after a prolonged illness, definitively terminated any prospect of post-presidential prosecution on these or related matters - including, per separate research, an out-of-court settlement direction reportedly given to former Attorney-General Abubakar Malami SAN in the Murtala Nyako prosecution, which stalled with Buhari's death. He received a full state burial in Daura.