MUHAMMADU BUHARI -=:; A PROFILE BY JAMILU KONTAGORA 2015-01-26 15:30 Muhammadu Buhari was born on December 17, 1942, in Daura, Katsina State. He went to Primary School in Daura and Mai’adua from 1948 – 1952, before proceeding to Katsina middle School in 1953. He attended the Katsina Provincial Secondary School (now Government College Katsina) from 1956 – 1961. On graduation from Secondary School in 1961, Buhari went to the Nigerian Military Training School, Kaduna in 1963. In October of the same year, he was sent to the officers’ Cadet School in Aldershot in the United Kingdom and was thereafter commissioned Second Lieutenant in 1963 and posted to the 2nd Infantry Battalion, Abeokuta as Platoon Commander in 1963. It was at the Abeokuta Garrison that the real traits of a great soldier were identified in the young man. From 1963 – 1964 he was sent for further training on the Platoon Commanders’ Course at the Nigerian Military College, Kaduna. In 1965, he went for the Mechanical Transport Officers’ Course at the Army Mechanical Transport School in Borden, England. He went to the Defence Services’ Staff College, Wellington, India in 1973 and to the United States Army War College from June 1979 to June 1980. In August 1975, after General Murtala Mohammed took power, he appointed Buhari as Governor of the North-Eastern State, to oversee social, economic and political improvements in the state. In March 1976, the then Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Buhari as the Federal Commissioner (position now called Minister) for Petroleum and Natural Resources. When the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was created in 1976, Buhari was also appointed as its Chairman, a position he held until 1978. In 1983, Major-General Buhari and Major- General Tunde Idiagbon were selected to lead the country by middle and high-ranking military officers after a successful military coup detat that overthrew civilian President Shehu Shagari on December. In 1985, Buhari was himself overthrown in a coup led by General Ibrahim Babangida on August 27th, and other members of the ruling Supreme Military Council (SMC) ostensibly, because he insisted on investigating allegations of fraudulent award of contracts in the Ministry of Defence. Between 1995 and 1998, Buhari served as the Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), a body created by the government of General Sani Abacha, and funded from the revenue generated by the increase in price of petroleum products, to pursue developmental projects around the country. Buhari contested the Presidential election as the candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party in 2003 and lost to former president Olusegun Obasanjo. Again, he contested under the ANPP banner in 2007 against Late Umaru Musa Yar’adua of the PDP and lost. In March 2010, Buhari left the ANPP for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a party that he had helped to found. Buhari was the CPC Presidential candidate in the 16 April 2011 general election, in which he lost to incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He is currently the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the 2015 presidential elction. - News24
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 20:09:42 +0000
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