The Muhammadu Buhari I Knew

Yes, I served the late President Muhammadu Buhari for eight years as his adviser on media and publicity. And I can say it anywhere that I loved him. He was not just my boss; he was a senior friend.

All the weeks and months that he had been in hospital in London, I kept tabs on his progress. When he was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), there was anxiety and trepidation. But when he was discharged to the ward, hope began to beat in our breasts once again. Till the afternoon of Sunday July 13, when the shocking event occurred. Our friend was gone.

On Tuesday, January 16, 2024, there was the public presentation of my book, “Working with Buhari”, drawing from my experiences as spokesman during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari between 2015 and 2023.

Why did I write the book?

I felt that the book needed to be done, one, because you find out that globally, when journalists serve in the kind of position I had served, they document their experience. It is the right thing to do.

Two, I felt I should write the book, because the Buhari I knew and got to know better, was not the Buhari a lot of Nigerians think they know. Therefore, that book had to be written for them to know the real Buhari. How he thinks. What motivates him. What are his passions. The things people didn’t know about him.

Like I wrote in the preface, the book was not about economic policy; monetary policy, foreign policy, hardcore of government. Rather it was about the software of Buhari as a person; not the hardcore.

Some people said they preferred the General Muhammadu Buhari that was military head of state in the 1980s, tough, hard as flint, to the Buhari that came 30 years later as civilian President. I had asked the former President that question and he answered it. He was aware that some people said they preferred General Buhari to President Buhari. The Buhari they knew was a 42-year-old Major General. Iron fisted. And he had a number two and a kindred spirit- Tunde Idiagbon, who was of the same mind. So, you see, they ruled the country with a rod of iron, because it was the military. That government was terminated.

Buhari came back 30 years later. Older. More mature, and more tempered. A 42-year-old man to a 73-year-old.  There is a wide gap. He had been to prison. He had seen communism collapse. He had become a democrat. And all sorts. So, there was a big difference. And that accounted for the new Buhari they saw.

Under military rule, he needed to just give the word and it was done. In a democracy, it is not that way. It has to go through the processes. Therefore, decision making and actuality of those decisions could not be the same thing. It was a Buhari who was a democrat. It was a Buhari who had been tempered by age, and like old wine, tasted much better. It was a Buhari who was more experienced and it was a Buhari who couldn’t be as ruthless as he was in his first coming. That is why a lot of people felt, well, the Buhari that was GMB – General Muhammadu Buhari – was better than Buhari who became PMB- President Muhammadu Buhari. But what they should understand is that the milieu was not the same. The military milieu was completely different from the civilian milieu.

By the time Buhari came in 2015, bombs went off three, four, five times a day, insurgency was the main thing. Later, it became hydra-headed. Kidnapping joined. Banditry came. Herdsmen joined. The security challenges became multifaceted. How much can a country take on at a particular time?

No leader will come and decide to inflict anguish on his people. No. A leader is there to tackle issues. And as much as possible Buhari tackled all these hydra-headed challenges. Anybody that says the security situation was worse than when he came in is not being truthful. Because we know what the security situation was. Nigeria was being completely overrun by 2015. Boko Haram was in the North East; it was in the North West. It was in the North Central. It was in Abuja. Abuja was being serially bombed. You had Nyanya one, Nyanya two bombings. People couldn’t go to recreation spots again. In churches and mosques, you had to be frisked with security gadgets before you entered. By the time he left, it was no longer so.

Economy. You may talk of the dollar. Dollar will always respond to certain things, particularly how you get forex. If you don’t produce, you don’t export and you don’t earn forex, how do you keep the dollar under control?

When Jonathan was in government, in the latter years, oil rose to as high as 144 dollars per barrel. At a point it stabilised at 100 dollars per barrel. When Buhari came in, it dropped to 37 dollars per barrel, and it stayed there for several months if not more than a year.

Later, when it appreciated a little, COVID came and it dropped further. It dropped to 20-something dollars per barrel. Therefore, if a country does not earn foreign exchange, how does it control its currency against foreign exchange, particularly the dollar?

One good thing the administration did was diversifying the economy, which had been a mantra since 1960. It became a reality under Buhari. Every government before his own had always said, ‘we will diversify the economy.’ It just remained at the level of promise. Under Buhari, it happened. He paid so much attention to agriculture that it became the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.

When you look at the GDP of Nigeria, oil began to contribute less than 10 per cent. In fact, nine per cent to the GDP. Oil that used to be 80-something percent of the GDP before, began to contribute less than 10 percent of our GDP. That is diversification.  The economy was diversified away from oil. Agriculture came in. ICT came in; contributed a big part of our GDP. Even manufacturing inched up a little, responding to some policy approaches of the administration.

I had made it a point of duty to see my former boss at least once a quarter, since we left office in May 2023. I went over the hills and the valleys to see him in Daura, Katsina State. When he moved to Kaduna, I also went. It turned out to be our last meeting, as he travelled abroad the week after I visited.

Nothing indicated that the former president was going the way of all flesh soon. I had asked how he was. And he said he was doing good, “having been free from the problems of Nigeria. And he laughed.

Adieumy President, my boss, and my friend. You were unique. Whence cometh another?

*Adesina was Special Adviser to President Buhari, 2015-2023