Critique Of Renaming University Of Maiduguri To “Muhammadu Buhari University”

 By Umar Ardo

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to rename the University of Maiduguri as “Muhammadu Buhari University, Maiduguri” in honour of the late former President Muhammadu Buhari has raised fundamental questions regarding its logic, appropriateness and historical justice. While the gesture may appear symbolic on the surface, a critical examination exposes its lack of intellectual, cultural and moral grounding.

2. First and foremost, Muhammadu Buhari was a career military officer and a politician – not an academic, educationist or intellectual in any public sense. His legacy, whether praised or criticized, is rooted in his military career, his ascension to the presidency and his distinct governing style marked by authoritarian tendencies, economic conservatism and a controversial anti-corruption crusade. Renaming a university, a citadel of learning, knowledge, research and intellectualism, after someone whose relationship with academia is at best peripheral, if not outright tenuous, dilutes the institution’s identity and purpose.

Nigeria: Buhari And A University Of His Own

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With the current preoccupation of President Muhammadu Buhari with the setting up of his own university, his flatulent claim of being actuated by public interest has suffered further repudiation. His pet project has unravelled him not as a touchstone of integrity, moderation and patriotism but as another victim of the acquisitiveness of the nation’s leadership that has ceaselessly undermined good governance.

President Buhari and wife, Aisha 

 To be sure, it was not Buhari himself who publicly vouchsafed his plan to set up a private university. It was his wife who disclosed that she would set up a university with the name Muhammadu Buhari University. But even if Buhari were not the originator of the idea, the fact that his name is associated with the project shows that he is fully behind it. After all, he has not disavowed his wife’s claim since the news broke.