Former First Lady Aisha Buhari has revealed that her late husband, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, briefly believed rumours in Aso Rock that she was plotting to kill him. She said the gossip created deep suspicion and prompted Buhari to begin locking his room and changing some of his personal habits.
Her account is contained in a new 600-page biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, written by Dr Charles Omole and launched at the State House. The 22-chapter book traces Buhari’s life from his early days in Daura, Katsina State, to his final hours in a London hospital in July 2025.
Aisha explained that her husband’s major health crisis in 2017 did not start as a mysterious illness or poisoning. She argued that it began when his carefully planned feeding routine and nutritional supplements, which she had overseen for years, were disrupted after the gossip spread.
According to the book, Aisha had long supervised Buhari’s meals and supplements at specific hours to support what she described as a slender man with a history of malnutrition symptoms. She believed that, for an elderly person, consistent nutrition was essential to maintaining strength and stability.
Before moving to Aso Villa, she said their routine involved daily cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders, oils and adjusted portions of protein and cereals at fixed times. When the presidency’s machinery took over their private lives, she convened a meeting with close staff, including the presidential physician, chief security officer, housekeeper and the DSS director-general, to explain the plan.
However, she said the arrangement began to unravel when rumours circulated that she wanted to poison the president. Aisha recalled that Buhari believed the gossip for about a week, during which he started locking his room, altering routines and, most importantly, delaying or skipping meals and stopping his supplements.
She alleged that for about a year he did not eat lunch regularly and that his meals were “mismanaged.” The breakdown in his nutrition, she insisted, was the real trigger for the health deterioration that eventually led to his long medical trips to the United Kingdom in 2017.
Buhari spent a total of 154 days in London that year, receiving treatment and temporarily handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. On his return, he admitted publicly that he had never been so ill and revealed that he underwent blood transfusions during his stay abroad.
Aisha rejected speculation that her husband had been poisoned or that there was a covert plot to eliminate him. She maintained that the “loss of routine” around his meals and supplements, not any secret scheme, was the true origin of the crisis.
The book recounts that in London, doctors prescribed an even stronger regimen of supplements for Buhari as part of his recovery. Initially, he was hesitant to take them as instructed, but Aisha said she took charge by mixing the hospital-issued supplements into his juice and oats to ensure he followed the plan.
She described the improvement as rapid, saying that after about three days he discarded the walking stick he had been using. Within a week, she said he was strong enough to start receiving visiting relatives again.
“That,” Aisha is quoted as saying, “was the genesis and also the reversal of his sickness,” linking both the onset and the recovery to how closely his nutrition was managed. Omole added that critics saw Buhari’s reliance on UK hospitals as evidence of Nigeria’s weak health system after decades of underinvestment, while others argued that a man in his 70s simply needed specialised care not easily available at home.
The biography also highlights what it describes as a climate of mistrust around the presidency. Aisha alleged that there was surveillance and bugging of the president’s office, including listening devices and the playback of private conversations, and claimed that fear and pressure from such intrigues “contributed to taking his life.”
She dismissed the long-running rumour that Buhari had a body double, popularly labelled “Jibril of Sudan,” as absurd. In her view, poor communication by government officials allowed ordinary developments to be twisted into conspiracy theories that spread widely among the public.
Omole also noted Buhari’s practice of formally handing power to his deputy whenever he travelled for medical treatment. He argued that this helped maintain institutional order during periods of personal health challenges and would form part of Buhari’s legacy for future leaders.
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