By Okechukwu Nwanguma
“Do not speak ill of the dead,” they say. But what if the dead, in life, spoke and acted with disdain for the living? What if their leadership brought only suffering, their policies ruin, and their silence, cruelty?
In the wake of Muhammadu Buhari’s death, a familiar chorus returns — the ritual silencing of collective trauma in the name of decorum. We are told to forget. To forgive. To whitewash. To let the dead “rest.” But what of the living still bleeding from the wounds of his leadership? What of the millions who carry scars — visible and invisible — from eight years of authoritarian aloofness masked as governance?
Buhari was no ordinary leader. He was, by all accounts, the most anticipated president in modern Nigerian history. Riding on a wave of unprecedented goodwill in 2015, he was handed a rare gift: national trust. And he squandered it with breathtaking audacity. His legacy? A country poorer, more divided, more insecure, and more hopeless than it was when he took the oath of office.
He was Commander-in-Chief when peaceful #EndSARS protesters were gunned down in cold blood at Lekki Tollgate. The streetlights were cut. The cameras turned away. The bullets flew. And the government, his government, denied it all. No empathy. No accountability. No justice. That was not leadership. That was state-enabled murder.
He was President when security forces massacred Shi’ite Muslims in Zaria. When DSS agents stormed judges’ homes in midnight raids, dragging the judiciary through mud and fear. He was Commander-in-Chief when Boko Haram “repentants” were celebrated with starter packs while victims of their terror wept in silence. He was Minister of Petroleum when billions vanished under his nose, yet fuel prices soared and scarcity became a national tradition.
Buhari governed like a ghost: distant, cold, and detached. He watched as inflation broke backs, as the naira collapsed, as doctors fled, as universities shut down. When he did speak, it was either a denial or a threat. Never compassion. No accountability.
And when his disastrous naira redesign policy plunged millions into chaos — leaving the elderly stranded, the sick untreated, and the poor without food or medicine — he never blinked. His government imposed suffering without strategy, without foresight, without remorse.
Yet, upon his death, we’re asked to mourn in silence. To forget the truth. To join the pretence. No. Not this time.
Buhari did not die in the hospital; he left it in ruins. He died abroad, in a sanitised system of care denied to the very people he governed. He fled from his legacy, like he often did in life. And while some will offer eulogies dressed in fake civility, others of us choose to remember, not out of spite, but out of duty. Historical duty. Moral duty.
Because when we lie about the dead, we deceive the living. When we canonise failure, we fertilise impunity. And when we bleach history to make villains look clean, we stain the future irreparably. This piece is not about vengeance. It is about reckoning.
If we are to build a Nigeria that truly values justice, truth, and accountability, then we must be honest about our past, especially when it hurts.
Buhari failed Nigeria. Spectacularly. Shamelessly. Fatally. And to forget that would not be forgiveness — it would be complicity.
We owe it to the victims, to the living, to the unborn — to remember. Loudly. Clearly. Truthfully. Let the dead rest, if they deserve to. But let the truth never sleep.
Okechukwu Nwanguma is a human rights activist in Nigeria and also Executive Director of RULAAC.
