Muhammadu Buhari

Muhammadu Buhari (; born 17 December 1942) is a Nigerian politician who served as the president of Nigeria from 2015 to 2023. A retired Nigerian army major general, he served as the country's military head of state from 31 December 1983 to 27 August 1985, after taking power from the Shehu Shagari civilian government in a military coup d'état. The term Buharism is used to describe the authoritarian policies of his military regime. Buhari ran for president of Nigeria on the platform and support of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in 2003 and 2007, and on the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) platform in 2011. In December 2014, he emerged as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress party for the 2015 general election. Buhari won the election, defeating incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. This was the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent president lost a general election. He was sworn in on 29 May 2015. In February 2019, Buhari was re-elected, defeating his closest rival, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, by over 3 million votes. Early life Buhari was born to a Fulani family on 17 December 1942, in Katsina State. His father was called Mallam Hardo Adamu, a Fulani chieftain from Dumurkul in Mai'Adua, and his mother, whose name was Zulaihat, had Hausa and Kanuri ancestry. He is the twenty-third-(23) child of his father and was named after ninth-century Persian Islamic scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari. Buhari was raised by his mother; he was about four years old when his father died. He attended primary school in Daura and Mai'adua, in 1953, Katsina Middle School, and attended Katsina Provincial Secondary School in Katsina State from 1956 to 1961 where he earned his West African School Certificate. Buhari went to the Nigerian Military Training School, Kaduna in 1963. Military career In 1962, at the age of 19, Buhari enrolled in the Nigerian Military Training College (NMTC). In February 1964, the college was upgraded to an officer commissioning unit of the Nigerian Army and renamed the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) (prior to 1964, the Nigerian government sent cadets who had completed their NMTC preliminary training to mostly Commonwealth military academies for officer cadet training).