Muhammadu Buhari, who left office in 2023 after serving two terms, made Nigerian political history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president at the ballot box.  

Buhari died at a clinic in London at the age of 82, his former spokesman, Garba Shehu, said in a post on social media.

Buhari’s tenure was dogged by health rumours.

He governed Nigeria with a strong hand as a military ruler in the 1980s before reinventing himself as a “converted democrat” to be elected as president decades later.

The rake-thin 82-year-old Muslim from the far north of Africa’s most populous nation made political history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting leader at the ballot box in 2015.

He unseated then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan on a vow to crack down on Nigeria’s rampant corruption and end an insurgency by Boko Haram jihadists, going on to claim re-election in 2019.

Buhari’s initial win—after three failed attempts in a country where re-election for the incumbent had been taken for granted—was seen as a rare opportunity for Nigeria to change course.

But his time at the helm failed to halt graft and insecurity, and was further dogged by economic woes, ill-health and the heavy-handed treatment of protesters.

Critics accused him of nepotism, appointing his northern kinsmen to sensitive government posts which heightened suspicion and rancour in a country where regional rivalry between the north and the south is high.