KANO, Nigeria — The 72-year-old former general elected asNigeria's new president this week is not exactly new to the democratic process: He spent much of the past decade campaigning for the office in three successive elections — and failing each time.
But then, as detractors insist and many supporters acknowledge, the former general, Muhammadu Buhari, had a long way to go to prove that he had left the military barracks behind. He first came to power in a coup over 30 years ago and became one of his country's harshest military rulers, waging a "war against indiscipline" that prescribed humiliating punishment for tardy civil servants.
He publicly executed young drug dealers on the beach, jailed journalists and expelled thousands of immigrants. He arrested 475 politicians and businessmen on corruption charges, trying them in military tribunals and jailing many for life. His rule lasted 20 months and ended in another coup.
That was Mr. Buhari's past. His supporters insist that it does not reflect the present, and so does the general. He is now a sworn democrat, they say.
Buhari Supporters Celebrate in Nigeria
Supporters of the former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, celebrated his victory over the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, in the presidential election on Tuesday.
Video By Reuters on March 31, 2015. Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.Yet, for many voters, it was precisely the ramrod-straight former officer's tough history that was one of his biggest electoral draws in a country swamped by the twin scourges of Islamist insurgency and corruption.
Mr. Buhari, voters suggested over and over, was a man who could deal with both. His image of personal austerity — a sandal-wearing ascetic, he is one of the very few Nigerian leaders who did not emerge from holding office immensely wealthy — added to his appeal.
Even some who had big reservations about Mr. Buhari swallowed them as they contemplated a country that appeared to be coming off the rails under President Goodluck Jonathan.
During Mr. Jonathan's tenure, the corruption scandals of government ministers were quietly ignored. Parliamentary reports detailing these scandals were hushed up. High civil servants who exposed them were fired.
And above all, Boko Haram, the radical Islamist group that has killed thousands of civilians, stormed unchecked across the north until very recently, when outside forces — mercenaries and the troops of neighboring countries — were called in.
The writer and Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka has been one of Mr. Buhari's most relentless critics in a series of writings over the years.
Mr. Soyinka has detailed the general's jailings of journalists and musicians, and in his memoirs called the public executions of the former general's rule "a deliberate effort to strike terror in the heart of the nation." He accused Mr. Buhari of having "brutalized" Nigerians, and said that the general had established a "norm of despotism" in the country by passing a "decree that forbade any discussion of a return to democratic rule."
Yet Mr. Soyinka all but acknowledged in a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper that he would vote for Mr. Buhari.
Mr. Buhari, questioned on the campaign trail in an interview with The New York Times about aspects of his past, seemed impatient. He insisted that both he and the times had changed. And he immediately launched into a rapid-fire discussion of the country's current troubles, about which he was unsparing.
He offered the voters less of a detailed platform for his presidency than an explicit promise to clean up the mess left by the man he handily defeated. And that bluntness is also characteristic of Mr. Buhari, those who know him say.
In the northern cities that are his stronghold and are Muslim like him, he is worshiped almost as a cult figure by many voters. At rallies during this campaign season, he stood stiff and erect, waving to the crowd and saying little. His presence was enough to reassure them.
On Tuesday night, the streets here were lined with jubilant supporters, and some older celebrants were nostalgic for what they remembered as the good old days of Mr. Buhari's rule.
"We need a government of Buhari's type," said Mohammed Inusa, a kola nut vendor on the crumbling sidewalk opposite the emir's palace here. "When he was head of state, we were happy. The country was secure. There was development, employment opportunities."
Mr. Buhari was born on Dec. 17, 1942, in the country's far north, the son of a village chief. He attended officer cadet school in England in the early 1960s, according to the historian Max Siollun, and took active parts in the military coups of 1966 and 1975, later serving in the successive military governments of the late 1970s, including as minister of petroleum.
In 1983, troops under his command cleared rebels from Chad fromNigeria's border, and he then refused civilian orders from Lagos to retreat into his own country. A New Year's Eve coup against the elected president, Shehu Shagari, then brought him to power.
Off all the peremptory episodes that marked his rule, perhaps the best remembered is the bizarre and unsuccessful kidnapping plot targeting a corrupt former minister who had fled to London, Umaru Dikko. It involved Israeli secret agents, a giant packing crate into which Mr. Dikko was stuffed, and anesthetic drugs. The episode put a severe strain on relations between Nigeria and its former colonial master, Britain, for years.
"On the one hand, he was respected for bringing discipline into the community's life," said Toyin Falola, a historian of Nigeria at the University of Texas. "People were reporting for work at the right time. That was a remarkable achievement for that time."
"On the other hand, he was resented for being authoritarian," Mr. Falola added. "And he was anticorruption. One of the reasons people voted for him this time is that, maybe, he will reduce the scale of the corruption."
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