Nigeria’s Whitewashed Heads of State: The General Muhammadu Buhari
By: Akinyemi, Muhammed Adedeji
Nigeria’s famous mutiny class of July 1966 all graduated summa cum laude, with their distinctions earning them places in Government. The set was responsible for all of Nigeria’s military governments from then on until the fourth republic. One of the famed graduates of this mutinous set who escaped punishment for their crimes against the Nigerian state was Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s anti-corruption merchant.
Muhammadu Buhari
Buhari is a Fulani man from Daura, North-East Nigeria. He was born on December 17, 1942, as the last of his mother’s 13 children, and the last of his father’s 23 children (1). His father Hardo Adamu was the Fulani chief of a village near Daura named Dumurkol. After his father died when he was only four years old, his mother, Hajia Zulaihatu Musa, raised him. He attended the Katsina Provincial Secondary School with Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, and the two were boyhood friends living in the same dormitory (2). Buhari was motivated to join the Military after the Emir of Kano had told them one time that “if soldiers could overthrow a line of kings descended directly from the prophet, it could happen anywhere. So we decided to join the army” (3).
