Muhammadu Buhari was born on December
17,1942, in Daura, Katsina State, to his father
Adamu and his mother, Zulaihat. He is the twenty-
third child of his father. Buhari was raised by his
mother, after his father died when he was about
three or four-year-old.
In 1971, Buhari married his first wife, Safinatu (née
Yusuf) Buhari (First lady of Nigeria December 1983-
August 1985). They had five children together, four
girls and one boy. Their first daughter, Zulaihat is
named after Buhari’s mother. Their other children
are Fatima, Musa (deceased), Hadiza, and Safinatu.
In 1988, Buhari and his first wife Safinatu were
divorced. In December 1989, Buhari married his
second and current wife Aisha (née Halilu) Buhari.
They also have five children together, a boy and
four girls. They are Aisha, Halima, Yusuf, Zarah and
Amina.
On January 14, 2006, Safinatu Buhari, the former
first lady, died from complications of diabetes. She
was buried at Unguwar Rimi cemetery in
accordance with Islamic rites.
In November 2012, Buhari’s first daughter, Zulaihat
(née Buhari) Junaid died from sickle cell anaemia,
two days after having a baby at a Hospital in
Kaduna.
Buhari joined the Nigerian Army in 1961, when he
attended the Nigerian Military Training College (in
February 1964, it was renamed the Nigerian
Defence Academy, in Kaduna. From 1962-1963, he
underwent Officer Cadets training at Mons Officer
Cadet School in Aldershot in England (Mons OCS
was officially closed down in 1972).
In January 1963, Buhari was commissioned a
second lieutenant, and appointed Platoon
Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion in
Abeokuta, Nigeria. From November 1963- January
1964, Buhari attended the Platoon Commanders’
Course at the Nigerian Military College, Kaduna. In
1964, he facilitated his military training by attending
the Mechanical Transport Officer’s Course at the
Army Mechanical Transport School in Borden,
United Kingdom.
From 1965-1967, Buhari served as Commander of
the Second Infantry Battalion. He was appointed
Brigade Major, Second Sector, First Infantry
Division, April 1967 to July 1967.
Buhari was made Brigade Major of the Third Infantry
Brigade in July 1967 to October 1968 and Brigade
Major/Commandant, Thirty-first Infantry Brigade,
1970-1971.
Buhari served as the Assistant Adjutant-General,
First Infantry Division Headquarters, 1971-1972. He
also attended the Defense Services Staff College,
Wellington, India, in 1973.
From 1974-1975 Buhari was appointed Acting
Director, Transport and Supply, Nigerian Army
Corps of Supply and Transport Headquarters.
He was also made Military Secretary, Army
Headquarters,1978-1979, and was a member of the
Supreme Military Council, 1978-1979.
From 1979 -1980, at the rank of colonel, Buhari
(class of 1980) attended the US Army War College
(established in 1901) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania,
United States of America and gained a Masters
Degree in Strategic Studies. Upon completion of the
on-campus full-time resident programme lasting 10
months and the two-year-long, distance learning
program, the United States Army War College
(USAWC) college awards its graduate officers a
master’s degree in Strategic Studies.
Other roles include:
General Officer Commanding, 4th Infantry Division,
Aug. 1980 – Jan. 1981
General Officer Commanding, 2nd Mechanized
Infantry Division, Jan. 1981 – October 1981
General Officer Commanding, 3rd Armed Division
Nigerian Army, October 1981 – December 1983
In July 1966, Lieutenant Muhammadu Buhari was
one of the participants in a coup led by Lt-Col
Murtala Muhammed that overthrew and
assassinated Nigeria’s first self-appointed military
Head of State General Aguiyi Ironsi, who assumed
leadership of the Nigerian government after a failed
coup attempt on January 15, 1966, which overthrew
the elected parliamentary system of government of
independent Nigeria (also known as First Republic).
Ironsi’s assumption of Nigeria’s leadership was
technically another coup following the January 15,
1966 coup. Other participants in the July 28, 1966
coup included 2nd Lieutenant Sani Abacha,
Lieutenant Ibrahim Babangida , Major Theophilus
Danjuma, Lieutenant Ibrahim Bako among others.
The coup was a reaction to the January 15 coup
where a group of mostly Igbo, led by Major
Chukwuma Nzeogwu overthrew the democratically
elected government of Prime Minister Abubakar
Tafawa Balewa.
Many Northern soldiers were aggrieved by the
murder of senior politicians, Prime Minister
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, northern regional
premier, Ahmadu Bello, and four senior officers,
Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, Colonel Kur
Mohammed, Lt-Cols Abogo Largema and James
Pam.[15] The counter-coup was very bloody
leading to the murder of mostly Igbo officers.
Among the casualties were the first military head of
state General Aguiyi Ironsi and Lt Colonel Adekunle
Fajuyi, the military governor of the Western Region.
In August 1975, after General Murtala Mohammed
took power that year, he appointed Buhari as
Governor of the North-Eastern State, to oversee
social, economic and political improvements in the
state.
In February 1976, the North Eastern state was
divided by the then Military Government into Bauchi,
Borno and Gongola states. In August 1991, Yobe
state was created from Borno state, while Gongola
state was split into two states, Taraba and
Adamawa. In October 1996, Gombe State was
created from Bauchi State.
In March 1976, the then Head of State, General
Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Buhari as the Federal
Commissioner (position now called Minister) for
Petroleum and Natural Resources. When the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was
created in 1976, Buhari was also appointed as its
Chairman, a position he held until 1978. During his
tenure as Commissioner, 2.8 billion Naira allegedly
went missing from the accounts of the NNPC in
Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. Former
President Ibrahim Babangida allegedly accused
Buhari of being responsible for his fraud.
However, according to the Modalities for
Coordinating Nigeria’s Anti-Corruption Strategies,
Constructive Engagement Vol.1 No.1, (2009), in
1983, Shagari administration inaugurated the Crude
Oil Sales Tribunal of Inquiry, headed by Justice Ayo
Irikefe, to investigate allegations of N2.8 billion
misappropriation from the NNPC account. The
tribunal however found no truth in the allegations
even though it noticed some lapses in the NNPC
accounts.
In 1983, when Chadian forces invaded Nigeria in the
Borno State, Buhari used the forces under his
command to chase them out of the country,
crossing into Chadian territory in spite of an order
given by then President Shehu Shagari to withdraw.
This 1983 Chadian military affair led to more than
100 victims and “prisoners of war”.
Major-General Buhari was one of the leaders of the
Nigerian Military Coup of December 31, 1983 that
overthrew the democratically elected government of
President Shehu Shagari. At the time of the coup
plot, Buhari was the General Officer Commanding
(GOC), Third Armored Division of Jos. With the
successful execution of the coup, General Tunde
Idiagbon, Buhari was appointed Chief of General
Staff (the de facto No. 2 in the administration). The
coup ended Nigeria’s short-lived Second Republic,
a period of multiparty democracy started in 1979.
According to the New York Times, the officers who
took power argued that “a flawed democracy was
worse than no democracy at all.” Buhari justified the
military’s seizure of power by castigating the
civilian government as hopelessly corrupt and
promptly suspended Nigeria’s 1979 Constitution.
In order to reform the economy, as Head of State,
Buhari started to rebuild the nation’s social-political
and economic systems, along the realities of
Nigeria’s austere economic conditions. The
rebuilding included removing or cutting back the
excesses in national expenditure, obliterating or
removing completely corruption from the nation’s
social ethics, shifting from mainly public sector
employment to self-employment. Buhari also
encouraged import substitution industrialisation
based to a great extent on the use of local materials
and he tightened importation.
Buhari broke ties with the International Monetary
Fund, when the fund asked the government to
devalue the naira by 60%. However, the reforms
that Buhari instigated on his own were as or more
rigorous as those required by the IMF.
On May 7, 1984, Buhari announced the country’s
1984 National Budget. The budget came with a
series of complementary measures:
A temporary ban on recruiting federal public sector
workers
Raising of interest rates
Halting capital projects
Prohibition of borrowing by state governments
15 percent cut from Shagari’s 1983 Budget
Realignment of import duties
Reducing the balance of payment deficit by cutting
imports
It also gave priority to the importation of raw
materials and spare parts that were needed for
agriculture and industry.
Other economic measures by Buhari took the form
of counter trade, currency change, price reduction
of goods and services.
Political Career:
In 2003, Buhari contested the presidential election
as the candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party.
He was defeated by the People’s Democratic Party
nominee, President Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ, by a margin
of more than eleven million votes.
On 18 December 2006, Gen. Buhari was nominated
as the consensus candidate of the All Nigeria
People’s Party. His main challenger in the April
2007 polls was the ruling PDP candidate, Umaru
Yar’Adua, who hailed from the same home state of
Katsina. In the election, Buhari officially took 18% of
the vote against 70% for Yar’Adua, but Buhari
rejected these results. After Yar’Adua took office,
the ANPP agreed to join his government, but Buhari
denounced this agreement.
In March 2010, Buhari left the ANPP for the
Congress for Progressive Change, a party that he
had helped to found. He said he had supported
foundation of the CPC “as a solution to the
debilitating, ethical and ideological conflicts in my
former party the ANPP”.
Buhari was the CPC Presidential candidate in the 16
April 2011 general election, running against
incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of
thePeople’s Democratic Party, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu
of Action Congress of Nigeria, and Ibrahim Shekarau
of ANPP. They were the major contenders among
20 contestants. He was running on an anti-
corruption platform and pledged to remove immunity
protections from government officials. He also gave
support to enforcement of Sharia law in Nigeria’s
northern states, which had previously caused him
political difficulties among Christian voters in the
country’s south.
The elections were marred by widespread sectarian
violence, which claimed the lives of 800 people
across the country, as hoodlums, who were
suspected to be Buhari’s supporters, attacked
Christian settlements in the country’s center
regions. The three-day uprising was blamed in part
on Buhari’s inflammatory comments.
In spite of assurances from Human Rights Watch,
who had judged the elections as “among the fairest
in Nigeria’s history”, Buhari claimed that the poll
was flawed and warned that “If what happened in
2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of
God, the ‘dog and the baboon’ would all be soaked
in blood”.
However, he remains a “folk hero” to some for his
vocal opposition to corruption. Buhari polled
12,214,853 votes, coming in second to the
incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP,
who polled 22,495,187 votes and was declared the
winner.
In the run up to the 2015 Presidential elections, the
campaign team of Jonathan asked for the
disqualification of General Buhari from the race,
claiming that he is in breach of the Constitution.
According to the fundamental document, in order to
qualify for election to the office of the President, an
individual must be “educated up to at least
secondary school certificate level or its equivalent”.
Buhari did not submit any such evidence, claiming
that he lost the original copies of his diplomas when
his house was raided following his overthrow from
power in 1985.
Buhari ran in the 2015 Presidential election as a
candidate of the All Progressives Congress. His
platform is built around his image as a stunch anti-
corruption fighter and his incorruptible and honest
reputation. However, Buhari stated in an interview
that he will not probe past corrupt leaders and that
he would give officials, who stole in the past
amnesty, insofar as they repent.
In February 2015, former Nigerian President
Olusegun Obasanjo quit the ruling PDP party and
threw his support behind the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket.
Muhammadu Buhari is the new president-elect and
winner of the March 28, 2015 presidential election,
in accordance with the votes counted by Nigeria’s
Electoral agency, the Independent National Electoral
Commission, on Tuesday, March 31, 2015.
—-Wikipedia
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