Muhammadu Buhari is under no illusion about the circumstances he will inherit should he this month become the first opposition candidate in Nigeria’s history to win presidential elections.
But the ascetic former military ruler, attempting for the fourth time to return to power via the ballot box since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, says he has no plans to launch a witch-hunt against those responsible for the mess in which Africa’s biggest economy finds itself.
If he returns to power, ongoing inquiries into the mismanagement of oil revenues, pension funds and defence procurement will run their course, he says. But there will be no repeat of the mid-1980s when, after seizing power in 1983, Gen Buhari presided for 20 months over a military junta that jailed hundreds of businessmen and politicians suspected of abusing state resources during the free-for-all that preceded the coup.
Whoever wins at the polls - scheduled for March 28 after a six-week delay on security grounds - will find themselves at the helm of a nation sharply divided along religious and ethnic lines, beset by the Boko Haram insurgency raging in the north and with its principal hard currency earner haemorrhaging revenues to oil thieves.
The rapidly depreciating currency has hit rich and poor alike, and with the treasury stretched by the failure of President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to put away sufficient savings before the collapse in the oil price, there will be little cash to paper over the cracks.
“So much damage has been done - if you said you would pursue everybody around, you will end up achieving nothing,” he told the Financial Times in an interview in London. “From the day the government is put in place, we [will] move forward. That is the best way we can make progress.”
Gen Buhari was speaking at a central London flat at the end of a curious, two-week hiatus in his campaign, during which some allies fretted that his bid for the presidency was losing momentum. Unfazed, he says he managed to “get some rest”.
He returns home convinced that Nigerians have had enough both of Mr Jonathan and the ruling People’s Democratic party, in power since the transition from military rule in 1999.
The 72-year-old visited 35 of 36 states in a gruelling tour of Africa’s most populous nation earlier this year, attracting hundreds of thousands of supporters at his most successful rallies.
“Wherever we went, they want change. One can see in people’s faces they really mean what they say: from Bayelsa to Maiduguri, from Calabar to Sokoto, from Katsina to Port Harcourt,” he said.
Delivering that change will be no easy task. Gen Buhari gives few policy details. His priorities would be stimulating agriculture and non-oil mining to create jobs and tackling the energy crisis besetting one of the world’s leading oil exporters.
He says the PDP government has addressed electricity shortages the wrong way, licensing and selling off power plants before putting in place the infrastructure to deliver gas to fuel them. His priority would be building the gas infrastructure.
On the chronic mismanagement of the state oil company, Gen Buhari says he needs to see how bad the damage is before deciding what to do.
He is unimpressed by a government-backed audit into billions of dollars in oil revenues that have allegedly gone unaccounted for.
“I don’t think they tried to account for it. They just told a story,” he says. Simply by curbing the waste there would be enough money to meet government commitments even if oil prices remain depressed, he adds.
“There may have to be some structural reforms,” he says. “But all the rules and regulations are there on the ground. We have to look for those people who can deliver.”
An old friend sitting in on the interview interjects: “If the top man is not fiddling, everything else will correct itself.”
In previous attempts to return to power via the ballot box, Gen Buhari struggled to shake off his image as a former dictator who is partisan to his home turf in the predominately Muslim north. Backed now by a broad coalition including influential power brokers from the predominately Christian south, his campaign has gathered a groundswell of support.
His appeal has much to do with the times and with his reputation for personal integrity. Nigeria can ill-afford another round of profligacy.
Unlike many of his peers, Gen Buhari left previous stints in office - as petroleum minister, military ruler and chairman of an infrastructure fund - unadorned by riches. “I resisted temptation consciously and that has paid off,” he says.
But it is Gen Buhari’s air of austerity that frightens those politicians dependent on state resources for lavish lifestyles. They are not afraid he will lock them up, he says, laughing, so much as that he will “halt the gravy train”.
Opposition and civil society activists remain concerned that the electoral process could be disrupted again as politicians with the most to lose seek to stop the former general winning.
“They have the resources and coercive forces at their disposal, and they think they can play God,” he says.
Thanking the British and Americans for maintaining pressure on the government to ensure the elections go ahead, he adds: “I don’t think they can dare Nigeria and the whole world.”
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Buhari’s rise to power
Muhammadu Buhari is one of a group of ex-generals who rose to prominence in Nigeria’s army shortly after independence from Britain in 1960 and have remained at the heart of politics, writes William Wallis.
Born in 1942 in the state of Katsina in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, he joined the army at the age of 19, rising through the ranks during the 1967-70 Biafran civil war. During the 1970s he served as a state governor and then petroleum minister.
In December 1983 he became military head of state after the army overthrew the government of Shehu Shagari following an election marred by fraud.
Nigeria, then as now, was suffering from a collapse in world oil prices and the overhang from debt accumulated during the boom years. Gen Buhari imposed a “war on indiscipline” which saw drug dealers executed and businessmen and politicians thrown in jail on suspicion of corruption. He was overthrown by fellow officers 20 months into his rule.
A devout Muslim with an ascetic lifestyle, he commands a dedicated following among poorer inhabitants of the north.
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