Buhari joins world leaders in paying tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev who passed away yesterday

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has joined other world leaders in paying tribute to former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev who passed away yesterday describing him as a courageous reformer who will be remembered for years to come.

Yesterday, Mr Gorbachev, 91, the last president of the Soviet Union passed away at a hospital in Moscow where he had been receiving treatment. In recent years, Mr Gorbachev's health had been in decline and he had been in and out of hospital and in June, it was reported that he had been admitted after suffering from a kidney ailment.

Mr Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of many prominent Russians, although it  is not clear whether he will receive a state funeral. President Buhari has joined those who paid tribute to Mr Gorbachev, saying he was a courageous reformer who will be remembered for years to come because of his immeasurable contributions to world peace and openness in his own once rigidly closed society.

President Buhari said: “The late Gorbachev was a remarkable gentleman whose reformist agenda had fundamentally changed Soviet society through his policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. Both of which set the stage for economic and political transformation of his own country and that of others in the defunct Soviet Union.”

However, President Buhari said President Gorbachev died without achieving his dream of a nuclear-free world. President Buhari explained that although Mr Gorbachev’s political career was consumed by those reforms, history and posterity will be kind to him for placing the interests of the Soviet people above his own ambition.

He added: “The impact of Gorbachev’s legacy was not limited to the former Soviet Union, but it also affected the wider world, such as his voluntary dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance in pursuit of permanent peace in the world. We cannot forget in a hurry how Gorbachev advocated for the destruction of nuclear weapons by both the former Soviet Union and the United States during his meeting with Ronald Reagan.

“Although Gorbachev died without achieving his dream of a nuclear-free world, his genuine commitment to durable international peace and security would never be forgotten."