Prominent journalist and columnist, Sam Omatseye, has published a blistering retrospective on the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, describing his presidency as an anticlimax marked by economic failure, bigotry, self-interest, and squandered public trust.

Omatseye, chairman of the editorial board of The Nation, a newspaper owned by President Bola Tinubu, published his take in an article titled Anticlimax, a day after Buhari’s death in London.

The piece offers a personal, historical, and critical lens into the life and leadership of the late Nigerian leader, whom Omatseye accuses of having “loved himself too much to love Nigeria enough.”

“We have never had a leader like Muhammadu Buhari, and we may never have one like him again,” Omatseye began, before going on to present a complex portrait of a man he said evoked images ranging from soldier-statesman to religious bigot.

He noted that Peter Enahoro, the celebrated journalist known as Peter Pan, had described Buhari as “deceptively gentle” in the 1980s, hinting early at the paradoxes that would come to define his career. “Since Peter Pan’s characterization in the 1980’s, in his first time as leader, Buhari changed his image as a sublime chameleon in many ways,” he wrote.


Omatseye said his own early impressions of Buhari were formed when he was General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Jos, encouraging the military to study the Constitution. As a young observer, Omatseye said he believed Buhari could bring “his spartan discipline to stanch the bleeding in the country.”

He described his support for Buhari’s presidential ambition in its early stages, stating, “I thought Buhari would bring his spartan charm and blend it with men of thinking and energy on the front row while he ran the country as a czar of corruption and due process.”

However, Omatseye said Buhari’s time in office failed to live up to that hope: “And that was the anticlimax of having him at the helm. He would govern with a purifying shadow, a sort of secular priest with his aura both cheering and chastening.”

According to Omatseye, Buhari ended up surrounding himself with a “cabal of antediluvian ideas,” citing the example of former Attorney General Abubakar Malami’s advocacy for open grazing. He called Buhari’s government “dead of ideas.”

“On the economy, he stood guard over a government that had no way to generate money except by printing and borrowing from China, among others. He gave us a debt of over N30 trillion in Ways and Means and several billions of dollars,” he wrote.

Omatseye accused Buhari of failing to improve the economy inherited from former President Goodluck Jonathan. “Rather, he worsened the situation, and created an economy that had to be saved from itself.”

He described the former president as selfish: “Buhari, in the end, turned out to be a man who looked after one man: Muhammadu Buhari.”

Citing Buhari’s refusal to clearly support Bola Tinubu during the 2023 election, Omatseye wrote, “It was hypocritical that he did not even tell now President Tinubu that he did not want him as his successor.”

“Rather he put his weight behind former Senate president Ahmad Lawan. It reflected his lack of integrity, and even blatant hypocrisy as a leader,” he added.

Omatseye also pointed to Buhari’s economic policies during the 2023 election as an attempt to derail Tinubu’s candidacy: “He ran an election-period economy with currency and fuel scarcity that cast his APC in bad light and sought to undermine its candidate.”

Criticising Buhari’s time as both military and civilian leader, he said: “As military leader, he squeezed the economy in the name of enshrining a moral tone. In his time as civilian leader, he choked the economy and failed as a moral compass.”

“He might have made the claim that he was a moral leader in his first time with his war against indiscipline. In retrospect, it was discipline without imagination or conscience,” Omatseye continued.

“He visited Ibadan once as a fighter for the herdsmen, and it cast him as a bigot,” he wrote, accusing Buhari of enabling banditry through inaction: “There is a belief that he did not want the bandits to be killed, so our murderers blossomed on the blood and treasures of society.”

In a searing critique, he said, “Buhari was a tease. He promised with an air of pious devotion. He did not deliver.”

Yet, despite all this, Omatseye acknowledged Buhari’s enigmatic charisma: “His was a charisma of suggestion. He was no demagogue, no performer. If one, his was a demagogue of body language.”

“He was loved by both cow and man. He did less for man than cow, but cows never had a way of gratitude known to man, except men like him, perhaps,” he added.

Even in his condemnation, Omatseye conceded that “History may yet be kind to him in a few areas,” pointing out that Buhari made progress on rail infrastructure, particularly under the guidance of former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola.

“He lived a phenom and died a phenom. He was a hero to many, a man of unflinching tenacity. Even in death, his foes have nothing but admiration, bordering on curious affection,” Omatseye concluded. “Goodbye to a man among men.”