Nigeria, July 18 -- Why should one be so sad about the death of an 82-year-old man? Not just sad. Dolorous. Mournful. Devastated. At 82, you are not exactly a young man, and anything can happen.

But not when you are Muhammadu Buhari, soldier of soldiers, an officer and gentleman. Not when you had survived a life threatening illness that lasted the better part of the year 2017, and you came out of it fresher and more vigorous.

I didn't expect President Buhari to leave, at least not in the next 10 years. For two days in March, I was with him in his Kaduna home, which had just been renovated, and which he moved into about three weeks earlier from his Daura, Katsina State homestead.

I met him with almost all the newspapers in the land spre...