By Augustine Eigbe
A long-held Nigerian tradition advises against speaking ill of the dead. In observance of this principle, a cone of public silence has, since former President Muhammadu Buhari’s death on 13th July 2025, enshrouded his political legacy.
This silence, observed by millions despite the palpable hardships endured during his tenure as Commander in Chief (C-in-C) from 2015 to 2023, was perhaps a final gesture of national decorum.
However, this hard-earned quiet is now being shattered not by critics, but by the former president’s own erstwhile allies. From the luxurious comfort of their havens, these figures are creeping back into public spaces and their weapon of choice is a gale of book launches to deodorise their former benefactor.
These are sanitised, revisionist accounts aimed not at honest reflection, but at a brazen insult to the collective sensibility and lived experience of the Nigerian majority, especially the over 133 million citizens consigned to multidimensional poverty according to the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS) under his watch.
These glossy volumes and their laudatory launches tirelessly parrot a familiar mantra of the personal “integrity,” “discipline,” and “uprightness” of the retired Army General.
This relentless focus on the man’s personal frugality begs a single, glaring and pertinent question that the authors and launchers carefully avoid.
Why did these sterling personal virtues fail to translate into good governance structures and operations he supervised as the president of Nigeria?
Under Buhari, nepotism, which is the worst and most entrenched form of corruption, was not nominally practiced; it was elevated to a central principle of governance. As a result, key appointments across agencies were stripped of any pretence to professionalism, merit, or even the constitutional requirement of federal character.
Instead, they were distributed as patronage based overwhelmingly on ethnic and religious considerations.
The administration created a bizarre parallel civil service, where retired kinsmen were resurrected and appointed to head sensitive security and revenue generation agencies. This deliberate policy caused widespread career stagnation, crushed morale within professional cadres, and led directly to catastrophic performance failures.
The result was a government structure not designed for efficiency or national service, but for clan loyalty, with devastating consequences for its output.
The most potent rebuttal to the glossy book narrative is unfolding in real time. It is written in the case files of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) where many of his former ministers and trusted aides have been invited, detained, or are under active investigation and prosecution for alleged misappropriation of funds amounting to millions of dollars and billions of Naira.
These were not rogue actors operating in the shadows; they were the faces of Buhari’s government, personally appointed and publicly defended by the president as trusted allies in his purported anti-graft fight.
This stark contradiction paints the true picture of an administration where personal loyalty was valued above institutional integrity, creating a permissive environment where corruption could thrive under the protective umbrella of presidential silence and inaction.
This systemic corruption was the direct engine of national destitution. The much-touted personal discipline was absolutely absent in economic management. His policy somnambulism, a sleepy, rigid adherence to outdated ideas, left the economy vulnerable and crippled.
The Buhari regime presided over the period where the country not only plunged into two recessions but also achieved the grim milestone of having the largest number of people living in extreme poverty globally according to World Poverty Clock ( WPC).
It was a botched multiple exchange rate regime, overseen by officials now under probe, that created a byzantine system for arbitrage and theft of public funds.
It had an agricultural policy that failed to curb soaring food inflation, even as funds meant for farmers allegedly found their way into the pockets of administration officials.
The national debt profile skyrocketed with little tangible infrastructure to show for it.
This was not mere mismanagement; it was a systematic diversion of resources, a grand betrayal where the fight against poverty was lost because the war against corruption within the government itself was never sincerely waged.
The current campaign to whitewash his eight-year history of misrule is a profound insult. It insults the intelligence of Nigerians who see former ministers who managed extreme poverty into existence now being investigated or declared wanted for diverting public money to their vast personal fortunes.
It insults the 133 million citizens recorded by the NBS as multidimensionally poor, who now watch as the alleged architects of their hardship are first celebrated in books, then pursued by law.
The true, unassailable legacy of former President Muhammadu Buhari is not found in the hagiographies now being marketed by his beneficiaries. It is etched in the hard, unforgiving data in the court affidavits and charge sheets of the EFCC, detailing the alleged corruption of his inner circle. It is also enshrined in the hard, unforgiving data of the World Poverty Clock, which designated the country as the world’s poverty capital, the two recessions, and the collapse of the Naira.
The majority of Nigerians do not need revisionist books to remember how they became poorer and its attendant implications on their livelihoods.
The attempt to rewrite this history of monumental failure is not just an insult to their sensibilities. It is a battle for the nation’s memory and it is a battle the truth, however uncomfortable for some, must win.
Augustine Eigbe, PhD is a historian and development communication expert.
