Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has recounted how her husband, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, “began locking his room” after circulating gossips in Aso Rock suggested she planned to harm him.
She also explained that the health crisis that forced Buhari to take 154 days of medical leave in 2017 began with disrupted feeding routines and poorly managed nutrition. She insisted that Buhari’s illness was neither mysterious nor caused by poisoning.
Her account appears in a new 600-page biography, ’From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, authored by Dr. Charles Omole, which was launched at the State House on Monday.
The 22-chapter book chronicles Buhari’s life from his early years in Daura, Katsina State, to his final days in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to the book, Mrs Buhari had long supervised her husband’s meals and supplements at specific times, a regimen she said was essential for “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” to maintain strength.
“Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support,” she recalled. “He doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule.”
The book states: “According to Aisha Buhari, her husband’s 2017 health crisis did not originate as a mysterious ailment or a covert plot. It started, she says, with the loss of a routine; ‘my nutrition,’ she describes it, a pattern of meals and supplements she had long overseen in Kaduna before they moved into Aso Villa.”
She convened a meeting with close staff, including the physician Suhayb Rafindadi, the CSO Bashir Abubakar, the housekeeper, and the SSS DG to explain the plan. Daily, “cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there” were prepared.
However, the routine unraveled due to rumours and fearmongering. “Then came the gossip and the fearmongering. They said I wanted to kill him,” she said. “My husband believed them for a week or so.”
The President reportedly began locking his room, altering small habits, and most crucially, “meals were delayed or missed; the supplements were stopped.” She added, “For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals.”
This led to Buhari taking two extended medical trips to the United Kingdom in 2017, totalling 154 days, during which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo assumed authority. Upon his return, Buhari admitted he had “never been so ill” and had received blood transfusions.
Rumours and conspiracy theories followed his absences, which Mrs Buhari debunked, insisting that the “loss of a routine, ‘my nutrition,’ was the genesis of the crisis.”
In London, doctors prescribed stronger supplements, but Buhari “was frightened and not taking them as prescribed,” so she managed his care, incorporating hospital-issued supplements into his juice and oats.
The book notes a swift turnaround: “After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives. ‘That,’ she says, ‘was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness.’”
Dr. Omole highlighted critics’ concerns that Buhari’s reliance on UK hospitals reflected the shortcomings of Nigeria’s health system. Yet he observed that specialized care may have been necessary for a man in his 70s after “decades of underinvestment.” He also praised Buhari’s practice of delegating power to his deputy during absences, ensuring “institutional propriety, even during personal health crises.”
The book further revealed a climate of mistrust within the Presidency. Mrs Buhari alleged surveillance, bugging of the President’s office, and playback of private conversations, claiming that fear and conscience “contributed to taking his life.”
She dismissed the long-rumoured existence of Buhari’s body double, popularly called “Jibril of Sudan,” describing it as absurd and blaming poor government communication for the spread of conspiracy theories.