Nigeria’s former military leader and president Muhammadu Buhari has died at a clinic in London, one of his aides said Sunday.

Muhammadu Buhari, who left office in 2023 after serving two terms, made Nigerian political history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president at the ballot box.  

Buhari died at a clinic in London at the age of 82, his former spokesman, Garba Shehu, said in a post on social media.

Buhari’s tenure was dogged by health rumours throughout.

He governed Nigeria with a strong hand as a military ruler in the 1980s before he eventually elected as president decades later.

He unseated then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan on a vow to crack down on Nigeria’s rampant corruption and end an insurgency by Boko Haram jihadists, going on to claim re-election in 2019.

Critics accused him of nepotism, appointing his northern kinsmen to sensitive government posts which heightened suspicion and rancour in a country where regional, religious and ethnic rivalry between the north and the south is high.

“BABA GO SLOW”

Buhari would disappoint in 2015 after taking 6 months to name his cabinet.

During that time, Nigeria (Africa’s most populous country) was hobbled by low crude prices, prompting people to call him “Baba Go Slow”.

He retained his popularity in the majority Muslim northern Nigerian states, where voters propelled him to his second victory in 2019, despite his first term being blighted by Nigeria’s first recession in a generation, militant attacks on oilfields, and repeated hospital stays for an undisclosed illness.

In 2022 the production of oil – by far Nigeria’s greatest export – fell to its lowest level in more than two decades due to crude theft in the Niger Delta.