KADUNA, Nigeria — Boisterous crowds packed the streets for the retired general, while young men climbed lampposts, walls and billboards to glimpse his gaunt face. Others danced on careening motorcycles, brandishing homemade brooms, symbols of his campaign.
With Nigeria’s presidential election only weeks away, Boko Haram’s unchecked rampaging here in the country’s north is helping to propel the 72-year-old general, Muhammadu Buhari, to the forefront.
After ruling Nigeria with an iron hand 30 years ago as the country’s military leader, Mr. Buhari is now a serious threat at the ballot box, analysts say, in large part because of Boko Haram’s blood-soaked successes.
“The state is collapsing and everybody is frightened,” Jibrin Ibrahim, a political scientist with the Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, said of Boko Haram.
“They are able to capture more and more territory, but also increase the level of atrocity,” he added. “A lot of people are frightened that these people can take over the whole country. So a lot of people are saying, ‘Give Buhari a chance.’ ”
Maps showing the violent rise of the Islamist militant group that is waging a campaign of terror in Nigeria.
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But he also noted the security problems in the nation’s south, where militants at oil fields have created havoc for years. “No highway in the country is absolutely safe,” Mr. Buhari said.
Though supporters insist he will knock out the Islamists “in a month,” as Mr. el-Rufai put it, the retired general is far more cautious. He spoke of a methodical approach, declining to say whether he would fire the country’s top military chiefs.
“We have to see the whole picture,” Mr. Buhari said. “We’ll ask them to brief us, one by one. Why haven’t they been performing?”
“Let them justify the use of funds,” he added. “What is the intelligence community doing? Where do they,” Boko Haram, “get weapons?”
He focused on the individual failures in confronting Boko Haram — the misspent money, the lack of weaponry for the soldiers, their lack of motivation for the fight — rather than on an overall condemnation of the army.
His jaw muscles tightening, he said: “This is not the Nigerian Army I knew.”
