The General Has Fallen: On Buhari, Memory, and the Ghosts We Carry

"The problem with Nigeria is not forgetting—it's how we remember."— Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter

13th July 2025: The Death of a General

General Muhammadu Buhari, former Nigerian military ruler and later democratically elected president, died quietly in a London hospital on 13 July 2025.For some, his passing marks the end of an era. For others, it reopens a wound. And for a generation born in the long shadow of Nigeria’s broken promises, it asks: What do we do with the memory of men who shaped us in silence?

From 1983 to 2025: The Long Arc of Power

In Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter, Buhari appears not as a central figure, but as part of the backdrop of post-war Nigeria’s ideological confusion. His 1983 coup, framed as a moral corrective, ushered in a regime of War Against Indiscipline that policed not just corruption, but the very texture of civilian life—how people queued, how they spoke, how they remembered. For Kasi—our protagonist born on the day Biafra fell—Buhari’s rule was not merely political. It was symbolic. It taught a generation that silence was survival, that obedience was virtue, and that to ask questions was to risk erasure.

The Novel’s Themes in a Post-Buhari Nigeria

Buhari’s death in a foreign hospital—far from the chaos and dust of the country he once ruled—feels emblematic of the very themes the novel grapples with:

Silence as Policy.

In both his military and civilian tenures, Buhari’s leadership often relied on suppression. The unanswered questions about June 12, about SARS, about memory and accountability, echo in the background of Nigeria’s psyche—and in the lives of characters like Kasi, Ugo, and Amara.

Inherited Wounds.

Buhari did not cause the Biafran War, but he belonged to the generation that enforced its aftermath. In the novel, the children born after the war—like Kasi—inherit grief that no one names. They grow up in a country where power changes hands, but pain never leaves.

The Ghosts We Carry.

Buhari’s presence in Nigerian history is spectral—looming, controversial, and unresolved. His death offers no easy closure. It only raises the question: Can a country move forward if its past is still waiting to be named?

On Legacy and Letting Go

Now that the General is gone, we’re left with memory—contested, fragmented, fragile.

And maybe that’s the point.

History isn’t what happened.

It’s what survives. It’s who gets to speak.

And who still isn’t allowed to.

In the final chapters of Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter, the characters wrestle not just with what they’ve lived through—but what their country refuses to remember. And as Buhari exits the stage, we’re invited to do the same.

Final Reflection

"He ruled us in silence, and died far from home. What we do with the silence now—that is the real inheritance."