08/06/2023
*VANGUARD NEWS*
*BUHARI; UNMITIGATED DISASTER*
*OPINION-EDITORIAL*
*May 25, 2023*
*Good Riddance, Buhari: You Came, You Saw, You Failed Woefully!*
*By Olu Fasan*
*MUHAMMADU Buhari, president of Nigeria since 2015, will leave office on Monday, May 29, after eight disastrous years. The late Chief Bola Ige famously coined the phrase, “good riddance to bad rubbish”. That, truth be told, is the best way to describe the exit of Buhari, his presidency and his government from power.*
*The past eight years of Buhari’s administration have been an unmitigated failure; a monumental waste of time, of resources, and of the hopes and aspirations of a nation and a people.*
*True stewardship is leaving a place better than one found it. But Buhari is leaving Nigeria far worse than he found it in 2015.*
*On any metric, Nigeria sunk deeper into an abyss under Buhari. Without a doubt, he’s the worst civilian leader Nigeria has, so far, had! No previous civilian president showed such aloofness, such indifference, such arrogance and such utter lack of competence and vision in governing Nigeria. None!*
*Before becoming president in 2015, Buhari had been a military head of state. But he was so calamitous that his colleagues removed him from power within 20 months. Yet, he enjoyed the privileges of a former head of state: the highest national honour, GCFR, permanent membership of the Council of State, numerous financial and other material benefits, and the prestige of being treated as an “institution”. So, what else did Buhari want? Why did he want to inflict himself on Nigeria as president, despite his irredeemable leadership flaws and acute intellectual weakness?*
*A comparison with General Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s other military-cum-civilian leader, is opposite. When General Obasanjo left office as military head of state in 1979, he threw himself into policy analysis, founded the Africa Leadership Forum, a policy think-tank, engaged in international diplomacy, read and wr
