President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s declaration that his administration will “continue to sustain Buhari’s legacies” is not merely contestable; it is a sweeping political claim that collapses under the weight of facts, timelines, policies, conduct, and memory. It is a claim that asks Nigerians to suspend recall, to forget sequence, to ignore substance, and to accept rhetoric as record. For right-thinking Nigerians, this is not tribute; it is revisionism.
Let us be clear from the outset: legacies are not sustained by speeches at book launches, by choreographed testimonials, or by carefully worded State House press releases. Legacies are sustained—or destroyed—by choices. By policies. By ideology. By conduct in power. By what a government continues, what it dismantles, and what it replaces. On these measures, Tinubu’s administration represents not continuity with Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency but a clean ideological and practical rupture.
The State House release attempts to narrow Buhari’s legacy to abstract virtues—discipline, integrity, modesty, and the idea that public office is a trust. These are noble attributes. But they are also safe abstractions. They are the kind of legacy language that avoids the uncomfortable terrain of policy, economics, welfare, foreign alignment, and social protection. In other words, Buhari’s legacy is reduced to character so that his policies can be quietly buried.
But Buhari was not remembered, supported, or followed by millions merely because he lived modestly. He was followed because he governed—rightly or wrongly—on a clearly defined worldview: state intervention over market absolutism; welfare buffers over shock therapy; currency management over free fall; non-alignment over geopolitical adventurism; and a stubborn, often criticised, insistence that the poor must not be sacrificed on the altar of “reform.”
Tinubu did not build on that worldview. He dismantled it.
Fuel subsidy, which Buhari retained for eight years in defiance of global financial institutions because he believed it cushioned the poorest Nigerians, was removed on Day One without buffers. Electricity subsidies, which Buhari treated as part of social protection and industrial stability, were slashed in the name of market efficiency. The Naira, which Buhari managed—sometimes clumsily, often controversially—to protect prices and wages, was floated into a historic collapse that shredded purchasing power and turned survival into a daily negotiation. Programmes like N-Power, TraderMoni, MarketMoni and GEEP—whatever their imperfections—were lifelines to millions. Under Tinubu, they were suspended, abandoned, or quietly euthanised without credible, comparable replacements.
These are not policy adjustments. They are ideological reversals. And no amount of posthumous praise can paper over that fact.
Then there is foreign policy. Buhari’s Nigeria, for all its shortcomings, maintained a long-standing non-aligned posture—balancing relations between China, Russia and the West, avoiding overt military entanglements, preferring quiet diplomacy to muscular intervention. Tinubu’s Nigeria pivoted sharply: hardline ECOWAS posturing, open confrontation with Niger and AES states, direct interventionist rhetoric and alignment that repositioned Nigeria not as a neutral regional leader but as an enforcer widely perceived as pro-Western. A non-aligned legacy cannot be sustained by geopolitical realignment.
Even the China–Nigeria currency swap, a strategic South–South instrument Buhari pursued to reduce dollar dependence, was sidelined under Tinubu until pressure and necessity forced reconsideration. Again: abandonment first, pragmatism later.
And yet, Nigerians are asked to believe that this is “continuing Buhari’s legacy.”
The political conduct tells an even more uncomfortable story. Immediately after Tinubu’s swearing-in, Buhari’s presidency became the convenient scapegoat for inherited problems. Blame games flourished. Revisionist narratives took root. Buhari, once the moral anchor of the APC coalition, was subtly recast as baggage. This tone was amplified by Tinubu-aligned voices, including senior communicators.
Then Buhari died. And in those first critical hours, before the gravity of the moment fully settled, some within Tinubu’s inner communication circle stumbled spectacularly. Mocking, dismissive, or politically loaded social media posts circulated. Claims that Buhari had “lost relevance in the North” were floated with reckless confidence. Videos and images of fringe celebrations—amplified to suggest mass sentiment—were shared. When backlash came, posts were deleted. Silence followed. Panic set in.
And then reality struck.
The massive crowds. The spontaneous mourning. The unmistakable outpouring of grief across northern Nigeria. The reminder that Buhari’s follower base was not a myth, not nostalgia, not something that could be wished away by online bravado. Suddenly, the tone changed. Abruptly. Dramatically.
Thus was born what can only be described as later day Buharists.
Those who had questioned Buhari’s relevance became his loudest eulogists. Those who had blamed his legacy rushed to claim custodianship of it. Those who had flirted with ridicule embraced later day Buharism with theatrical enthusiasm. Crocodile tears flowed. Praise became excessive. Brotherhood was rediscovered. History was rewritten in real time.
This is not honour. It is political convenience.
If Tinubu were truly sustaining Buhari’s legacy, the APC would not have found itself dispatching governors and NEC members to plead with Buhari to restrain the CPC bloc from leaving the party. Buhari would not have declined to intervene. The CPC bloc would not have eventually disengaged. That refusal—quiet, dignified, final—was itself a verdict on the claim of continuity.
So difficult questions must be asked, and they must be asked without fear:
How does one sustain a legacy whose core policies one has dismantled?
How does one honour a worldview one has repudiated?
How does one claim ideological kinship after months of blame and revisionism?
How does one reconcile “later day Buharism” with earlier contempt?
Is legacy now a costume to be worn at book launches and funerals, then discarded in governance?
Are Nigerians expected to confuse ceremonial reverence with substantive continuity?
Do Tinubu’s defenders genuinely believe memory has a two-year shelf life?
Or is the assumption that Nigerians cannot connect policy outcomes to political choices?
The State House release is eloquent. It is polished. It is emotionally curated. But it is also carefully evasive. It avoids policy. It avoids economics. It avoids welfare. It avoids foreign alignment. It avoids the CPC fracture. It avoids the post-inauguration blame. It avoids the social media missteps. It avoids everything that would subject its central claim to verification.
History, however, is not written by press releases. It is written by actions. And the record shows that Tinubu did not inherit Buhari’s legacy and carry it forward; he broke from it, dismantled it, and only later—when political costs became apparent—attempted to rhetorically reclaim it.
That is not continuity. That is appropriation.
And Nigerians, especially right-thinking Nigerians, deserve better than to be asked to applaud a performance that insults their memory, their intelligence, and their lived experience.
Legacy is not sustained by proclamation. It is sustained by practice. On that test, the claim fails.