By FEMI ADESINA
Why should one be so sad about the death of an 82-year-old man? Not just sad. Dolorous. Mournful. Devastated. At 82, you are not exactly a young man, and anything can happen.
But not when you are Muhammadu Buhari, soldier of soldiers, an officer and gentleman. Not when you had survived a life threatening illness that lasted the better part of the year 2017, and you came out of it fresher and more vigorous.
I didn’t expect President Buhari to leave, at least not in the next 10 years. For two days in March, I was with him in his Kaduna home, which had just been renovated, and which he moved into about three weeks earlier from his Daura, Katsina State homestead.
I met him with almost all the newspapers in the land spread on the table before him. He was reading one. That his winsome smile, and I asked how he was doing. He said very well, since he was free from the troubles of Nigeria. We laughed.
Typical of him, he asked after the welfare of my family, and how I was doing. We then discussed many things about our country particularly the vast, ungoverned borders between Nigeria and neighboring countries in the North. The length is about 1,500 kilometers.
“Only God can effectively man it,” he said, and laughed.
It was Ramadan, and I joined at dinner. The former First Lady, Aisha, was around, and offered me some roasted meat (Suya).
Less than two weeks later, he travelled to London for what was said to be a routine medical trip. It lasted almost four months, and he never returned, at least not alive.
When President Buhari was brought back home for burial on Tuesday, July 15, having died two days earlier, I looked at the grave that had been dug at a favorite spot he used to sit in the courtyard of his modest home. There was the narrow inner part, and the words of Thomas Gray in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard came to my mind: “Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade, where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap, each in his narrow cell forever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”
Each in his narrow cell forever laid. So, Baba Buhari, my boss and senior friend would be laid in this narrow cell? Well, it’s the lot of mortals. Doomed to die. All mortals must go one day. Good grief!
As he was laid to rest forever in that narrow aperture, I remember one thing the President had said to me on March 30, 2023, exactly two months to our leaving office.
I had told him I was planning to write a book, and I needed sessions of interview with him. He consented. I asked many questions which later formed major part of my book, Working with Buhari: Reflections of a Special Adviser, Media and Publicity (2015-2023). And the last question was; Mr President, after here, what next? And he said:
“I’m looking forward to leaving. And from there, I go to my grave at the appointed time.”
The appointed time came on Tuesday, but I must confess that I was shocked at the casual way the President had talked about going to his grave. Wasn’t he fazed by the prospect? Did it not scare him? And I said to myself; this man, he neither fears life nor death. He seems so sure of his God.
I had known Muhammadu Buhari at close quarters two clear years before he became President. But we had been talking on phone about three years before then.
My mother, that stately, urbane woman, had died in August 2013, aged 75. We were having part of the obsequies in Lagos, and I’d invited many people, including Major General Buhari, former military head of state.
To my utmost shock, he came! And not only that, he stayed through the Christian ceremony. Bigot? That’s the man they say never wants to hear about any other religion, except Islam. A man who wanted to Islamize Nigeria. My respect for him went several notches higher.
I didn’t think I would ever work in government, and didn’t even want it. But with a Muhammadu Buhari as President, I gladly had a change of mind, which lasted eight years and beyond.
I resumed work on June 1, 2015, and never forgot the things he told me: don’t let anybody stop you from seeing me, whether in the office or at home. Whenever you have to see me, just come.
Another. I’m a General, and I can argue. Don’t be intimidated. Argue with me. If you have a better point, I’ll agree with you.
I had opportunity to test that second instruction just nine days later. Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara had wangled their ways into the leadership of the National Assembly, against the preference of their party, the APC. Though rebellious, what they did followed constitutional order. So I told the President we needed to congratulate them. He balked. But I stood my ground. He said no, I also said no. I said it would portray him as undemocratic. At the end of the day, he reasoned with me and the statement was written, with him just adding one word. Keeping to his word is part of the famed integrity. Argue with me. If you have a better point, I’ll agree with you.
I’m not writing another book, or am I? Let the reader please forgive me for the lengthy piece.
When his first Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba Kyari died in 2020, and I went to condole with him, President Buhari thanked me, and said: “We shall all go one day. Only that we don’t know the time.” Now we know. July 13, 2025.
A patriot who loves his country, especially the ordinary people. When insurgency reached its peak in 2021, and he held a meeting with security chiefs, he was virtually pleading: “Wipe out these people. Kill them. They are haters of humanity. They don’t deserve to live. Nigerians love me, they trust me, that’s why they keep voting for me. Wipe them out. Kill them.”
Lt Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru was the Chief of Army Staff then. He pledged that as soon as the platforms they were expecting came, they would finish the job in a short time. Sadly, Attahiru died in a plane crash one week later.
Somebody had suggested at the meeting that maybe the country should hire mercenaries. The President said no. He said our military fought in Burma, in Congo, and in Biafra. They proved themselves. Why then mercenaries?
“See what Buba Marwa is doing at NDLEA. Simply fantastic. And we have many more like Marwa in the military,” the President said.
Some people claim he was never aware of anything. I laughed. And still laugh. His memory was amazing. I had taken issues concerning some people to the President for his intervention. And he usually helped, as long as it was not against his principles. One day, in our 5th or 6th year, I took a matter to him at home. He listened carefully, then said:
“Adesina, each time you have brought a private matter to me, you have come to speak for somebody. You have never asked for something personal.”
Humility and simplicity. Don’t look far, when you have seen Buhari. When a President has retired to his quarters for the night, nobody can bring him down again. Nobody, I say.
Bayo Omoboriowo was his Personal Photographer, and one of my staff in the media department. He had put together a photo book on the President, which he planned to launch at the State House Conference Centre. The President had been duly invited as Special Guest of Honor.
The night before, Bayo approached me that I should lead him to remind the President. A dutiful, pleasant young man, I obliged. When we got to the residence, the President had gone up for the night. Brickwall. We were still scratching our heads in dismay, when President Buhari emerged from a side door.
“I had gone up, but I saw you through the cameras, and decided to come down to see you.”
Astounding. Astonishing. Shocking.
When we told him why we came, he said he had appointed somebody to represent him at the event. We screamed, and went flat on our bellies, pleading. He looked at us, smiled paternally, and said he would come. He did, and his presence made all the difference.
One day, former EFCC Chairman, Farida Waziri, gave me a message to the President. When I delivered, he said, “Ah, Farida Waziri. One of the women I respect most in the country.” What she wanted got done. Pronto!
Permit me again to share two more stories. President Buhari had just removed Ita Ekpenyong as DG DSS, and replaced him with Lawal Daura. When he gave me the name to announce, and because there had been loud murmurs of nepotism in appointments, I asked him why he didn’t pick a man from South-south to replace a South-southerner. His reply:
“When key positions are to be filled in the country, a search is conducted, the three best people are presented to me. If I then bypass the best person because of where he comes from, his language or religion, Allah will judge me for it. That’s what informs my decisions.”
Very considerate man. The Anyiam-Osigwe family holds annual lectures at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, to which they bring illustrious international speakers, presidents, prime ministers, and the like. In 2016, the theme was on corruption, and their partners all over the world told them there was no better person to handle the topic than the Nigerian president.
I told President Buhari, and he said he was willing to deliver the lecture, but he wouldn’t want it in Lagos because of the hardship it would cause for people through disruption of traffic and movement. Could they consider Abuja as venue?
I told the Anyiam-Osigwes, and they agreed to Abuja. They booked the International Conference Centre, and built the platform and other decorations with N5 million.
The night before the lecture, I heard that the President had been convinced to send a Minister to read his speech. I went to meet him at home, and reminded how he had promised to personally deliver the lecture. I also told him how much the organizers had spent on getting the hall ready.
“In that case, I must go,” said the President. And he went.
I must stop, though there are hundreds of stories still to tell. How he refused the gift of an SUV from a contractor, instruction he gave Minister Babatunde Fashola to build the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos/Ibadan, Enugu/Port Harcourt , and Abuja-Kaduna-Kano expressways, how Mele Kyari, NNPCL GMD told me Buhari never asked for a dime from the corporation that was gravy train for many former leaders, what the President told me after his son, Yusuf, had a bike accident, how his friends paid the fees of his children through school, his phone chats with Rev Chris Okotie, Duro Onabule, Tunji Braithwaite, among others.
President Buhari was an icon, a unique man. Perfect? No man is. His shortcomings, as little as they are, have been interred with his bones. The good he did lives after him.
*Adesina was media adviser to President Buhari for 8 years
