There is an important lesson in the presidency of the late Muhammadu Buhari about leadership, public perception and the danger of allowing the past to influence decisions that should be guided by the long-term interests of a nation.
I supported Buhari for eight years as President of Nigeria. That support did not mean I agreed with every decision he made. However, I believed in his leadership and the possibility of a better Nigeria under his administration.
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His presidency offers an opportunity to reflect on how a leader’s history and the public’s perception of him can influence his decisions when he gets another opportunity to govern.
This is not an attempt to demean a man who has passed on. Rather, it is an effort to understand the dilemma he may have faced and how his past could have influenced some of his most consequential economic decisions.
When Buhari became Nigeria’s military Head of State following the December 1983 coup, he was in his early forties.
His government came to power amid economic difficulties, allegations of corruption and public frustration with the civilian administration of Shehu Shagari.
There was genuine public anger. Corruption and economic mismanagement had damaged confidence in the political class.
Buhari promised to restore discipline and accountability, but his approach reflected the instincts of a military ruler who believed that problems could be solved through forceful enforcement.
Under his administration, Decree No. 2 of 1984 permitted detention without charge, while Decree No. 4 restricted press freedom. Politicians and public officials were detained, and special military tribunals tried many people accused of corruption.
Although corruption was a legitimate concern, accusations should never substitute for proof. The presumption of innocence is fundamental to justice.
Treating suspects as guilty before establishing their culpability undermines the very principles a government claims to defend.
The War Against Indiscipline, launched in 1984, was another expression of Buhari’s governing philosophy. Its objectives included promoting orderly conduct, punctuality, sanitation and respect for public rules.
However, soldiers were deployed to enforce compliance, and reports of physical punishment and public humiliation became part of the programme’s legacy.
The intention was to instil discipline, but the methods reinforced the image of an uncompromising and authoritarian leader.
Buhari’s military administration lasted barely twenty months before General Ibrahim Babangida overthrew it in August 1985. Yet that short period left a lasting impression.
For some Nigerians, Buhari represented discipline and opposition to corruption. For others, he symbolised authoritarianism and excessive punishment. These contrasting perceptions followed him into his subsequent political career.
After several years in detention, he returned to politics and contested the presidential elections of 2003, 2007 and 2011, losing each time before winning in 2015.
His eventual victory demonstrated that a former military ruler could return through the ballot box. But I wonder whether the reputation he carried into the presidency also became a burden.
A leader who has spent years being perceived as harsh or insensitive may feel compelled to demonstrate that the public has misunderstood him.
He may become particularly conscious of how decisions will be received, especially when those decisions threaten the welfare of
We cannot know with certainty whether this influenced Buhari’s private calculations. Nevertheless, it offers a useful perspective for examining the economic choices his administration made or postponed.
Consider fuel subsidy.
For decades, successive Nigerian governments defended petrol subsidy as a means of protecting citizens from the full cost of fuel.
Removing it meant higher transport fares, increased distribution costs and further pressure on household budgets.
These were legitimate concerns, particularly in a country where millions struggle to meet basic needs.
However, subsidy had also become a substantial fiscal burden, diverting public resources from infrastructure, healthcare, education and other essential services.
Buhari’s government eventually acknowledged that the arrangement was unsustainable. His final budget provided for subsidy expenditure only through the first half of 2023, but his administration left office without implementing the planned removal. His successor, Bola Tinubu, announced the removal in May 2023.
Could Buhari’s reluctance to confront the issue earlier have been influenced by the fear of being remembered as a president who imposed additional hardship on Nigerians? It is a plausible interpretation.
The economic dilemma, however, was clear. The immediate pain of removing subsidy was visible and politically dangerous, while the benefits of fiscal savings would take time to materialise.
Yet postponing reform did not eliminate its costs. It left future administrations to confront the problem, potentially under more difficult circumstances.
A compassionate leader must consider not only the immediate suffering a decision might cause but also the future suffering that avoiding it could create.
Fuel subsidy was not the only difficult economic decision Buhari’s administration struggled to confront. Foreign-exchange management was another.
Nigeria maintained a managed and segmented foreign-exchange system, with different rates and restrictions on access to dollars.
Although the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced a managed floating regime in 2016, the market remained far from fully unified. The official and parallel-market rates diverged substantially.
The consequences were serious.
When the official exchange rate does not reflect the balance between foreign-currency supply and demand, the difference does not disappear simply because the government declares a preferred price. It reappears through shortages, restrictions, parallel markets and opportunities for arbitrage.
Suppose the official rate is ₦400 to the dollar while the parallel-market rate is ₦800.
Someone who legitimately obtains $100,000 at the official rate for ₦40 million could potentially sell those dollars for ₦80 million in the parallel market, generating a gross difference of ₦40 million before costs.
This illustrates a 100 per cent gross gain. It does not mean every beneficiary of official foreign exchange engaged in such transactions.
Nevertheless, the disparity created incentives for rent-seeking and raised questions about transparency and privileged access. Many became sudden millionaires as a result of this arbitrage.
Businesses that obtained dollars at preferential rates enjoyed advantages over competitors forced to buy at substantially higher prices.
The system could reward access rather than productivity, distort investment decisions and discourage confidence.
Why was a more decisive move towards exchange-rate unification not made earlier?
One possible explanation is concern about the immediate consequences of depreciation. A weaker naira would increase the cost of imported food, medicines, machinery and other goods.
It would also raise the naira cost of foreign education, medical treatment and servicing dollar-denominated obligations.
These were legitimate concerns. But there is a difference between protecting households from immediate hardship and maintaining a system whose distortions impose costs elsewhere.
An artificially favourable official rate does not make dollars cheaper for the entire economy when supply is insufficient. Businesses unable to access official foreign exchange may turn to the parallel market, passing higher costs to consumers.
Allowing the naira to float would not, by itself, have guaranteed stability or prevented depreciation.
Successful reform would also have required credible monetary policy, stronger foreign-exchange supply, improved fiscal management and protection for vulnerable households.
Nevertheless, the objective should have been a transparent, credible exchange-rate system rather than one in which substantial differences between official and parallel rates created opportunities for arbitrage.
In June 2023, after Buhari left office, the CBN under the Tinubu presidency moved towards a more unified foreign-exchange framework. The change underscored the distortions that had accumulated under the previous arrangements.
Again, the point is not that Buhari deliberately sought to damage Nigeria’s economy. It is that concern about immediate hardship may have contributed to the difficulty of confronting economic problems whose costs were already accumulating.
These challenges coincided with weak revenue mobilisation, oil-market volatility, the COVID-19 pandemic and rising debt-service obligations.
Nigeria’s economic difficulties had multiple causes and cannot fairly be attributed to one president alone.
However, Buhari’s administration became increasingly reliant on borrowing from the CBN through its Ways and Means facility to finance government obligations.
By late 2022, outstanding advances had reached approximately ₦22.7 trillion. The government subsequently obtained legislative approval to restructure the accumulated obligations into longer-term debt.
Ways and Means advances are intended to address temporary government cash-flow needs.
Persistent reliance on central-bank financing to cover budget deficits, however, can complicate monetary management, contribute to inflationary pressures and transfer financial obligations into the future.
Borrowing is not inherently wrong. Governments may need it to finance productive investments or respond to emergencies. The important questions are whether the borrowing is sustainable, what it finances and how transparently it is managed.
The concern was the scale of the accumulated obligations and the government’s reliance on this financing mechanism.
A country cannot indefinitely address structural revenue problems by repeatedly finding new ways to meet immediate spending commitments. Eventually, the underlying imbalance must be confronted.
Here lies the central paradox: a leader may genuinely care about ordinary people and still make decisions that expose them to greater hardship in the long run.
Protecting citizens from immediate pain is admirable. But public policy must also be judged by its consequences, sustainability and the costs of decisions avoided.
Perhaps Buhari’s desire to be seen as a leader who understood the suffering of ordinary Nigerians made some difficult economic choices harder.
We cannot establish how much this influenced individual decisions, but his experience illustrates the wider challenge facing leaders burdened by powerful public perceptions.
Can the desire to disprove critics discourage a leader from making an unpopular but necessary decision? Can the fear of being blamed for immediate hardship encourage policies that transfer greater costs to the future?
These questions extend beyond Buhari and Nigeria.
Leadership is not simply about being popular. Sometimes, serving the public interest requires difficult decisions that will initially attract criticism.
The responsibility of government is to explain those decisions honestly, protect vulnerable citizens and ensure that the promised benefits materialise.
Reform without compassion can be cruel. Compassion without economic sustainability can be irresponsible. Responsible leadership requires both.
I supported Buhari for eight years, and I can acknowledge his good intentions without defending every outcome of his presidency.
There is no contradiction in appreciating a person’s intentions while examining the consequences of his decisions honestly.
The past can provide valuable lessons, but it can also become a burden when the desire to correct old perceptions overshadows present realities.
The greatest test of compassion is not whether a leader avoids every unpopular decision. It is whether he can make necessary decisions without abandoning those who bear their immediate costs.
And the greatest test of leadership is not whether a man changes how history remembers him. It is whether the country he leaves behind is better equipped to confront tomorrow’s challenges.
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Buhari’s journey offers us a sobering lesson: a leader’s past can influence his future, but a nation’s future should never be held hostage to the burden of a leader’s past.
