Articles features
Nigeria's new president is Indian defence college alumnus
By
Francis KokutseAbuja (Nigeria), April 1
Nigeria's newly
elected president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari who defeated incumbent
President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election, is an alumnus of the
Indian Defence Services Staff College in Wellington from where he
graduated in 1973.
Maj. Gen. Buhari became the president-elect
after President Jonathan conceded defeat in the election and put in a
call to congratulate his opponent, the presidential candidate of the
opposition All Progressive Congress (APC). This is the first time a
Nigerian sitting president has conceded defeat in an election.
Maj.
Gen. Buhari, a former military head of state, polled 15,424,921 votes
against President Jonathan's 12,853,162, according to official results
declared on Wednesday by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He also obtained the 25 percent threshold in 24 out of the country's 36
states to win in the first round of the election.
He was born on
December 17, 1942, in Daura in Katsina state, and was the 23rd child of
his parents. He lost his father, Adamu, when he was only four years old.
Buhari
joined the Nigerian Army in 1961 and attended the Nigerian Military
Training College in Kaduna. Between 1962-1963, he was an Officer Cadet
at Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot in England and was
commissioned a second lieutenant in January 1963.
He served as a
commander of the Second Infantry Battalion from 1965-1967 and later
became a Brigade Major, Second Sector, First Infantry Division, from
April 1967 to July 1967.
Buhari was made Brigade Major of the
Third Infantry Brigade, July 1967 to October 1968, and Brigade
Major/Commandant, Thirty-first Infantry Brigade, 1970-1971.
Between
1971 and 1972, he served as the Assistant Adjutant-General, First
Infantry Division Headquarters. From 1974 to 1975, Maj. Gen. Buhari was
appointed Acting Director, Transport and Supply, Nigerian Army Corps of
Supply and Transport Headquarters.
He was also made Military
Secretary, Army Headquarters,1978-1979, and was a member of the Supreme
Military Council, 1978-1979. From 1979-1980, Maj. Gen. Buhari attended
the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and gained a masters
degree in strategic studies.
Following a coup In August 1975 by
the late General Murtala Mohammed, he was appointed governor of the
North-Eastern state. In March 1976, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as a
military head of state, appointed Maj. Gen. Buhari as the federal
commissioner for petroleum and natural resources. When the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation was created in 1976, Buhari was also
appointed its chairman, a position he held until 1978.
Buhari
became head of state from December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985, after
taking power in a military coup d'état. Following the introduction of
civilian rule, he ran unsuccessfully for the office of president in the
2003, 2007 and 2011 elections.
(Francis Kokutse can be contacted at [email protected])