Former First Lady Aisha Buhari, has said her late husband, Muhammadu Buhari, began locking his room after rumours in Aso Rock alleged that she planned to kill him.
She said the gossip disrupted Buhari’s feeding routine and contributed to the health crisis that forced him to take 154 days of medical leave in 2017.
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Aisha said Buhari’s illness was neither mysterious nor the result of poisoning.
Her account is contained in a new biography titled From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, authored by Charles Omole and launched at the State House on Monday.
The 600-page book chronicles Buhari’s life from his early years in Daura, Katsina state, to his final hours in a London hospital in July 2025.
According to the book, Aisha supervised Buhari’s meals and supplements at specific hours, a routine she said helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” maintain strength.
“Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support,” she recalled, adding, “He doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule.”
The book said Aisha convened a meeting with close staff, including Buhari’s physician, Suhayb Rafindadi, Bashir Abubakar, chief security officer, the housekeeper and the director-general of the SSS, to outline the feeding plan.
She said the routine involved “daily, at specific hours, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there”.
However, the routine later broke down.
“Then came the gossip and the fearmongering. They said I wanted to kill him,” the book quoted her as saying.
She said Buhari believed the rumours for about a week, began locking his room and changed his habits, leading to missed meals and discontinued supplements.
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” she said.
The deterioration culminated in Buhari’s two prolonged medical trips to the United Kingdom in 2017, during which he handed over power to Yemi Osinbajo, then vice-president.
Omole wrote that Buhari later admitted he had “never been so ill” and received blood transfusions during the period.
Aisha dismissed claims that her husband was poisoned, insisting that “loss of a routine, ‘my nutrition,’ was the genesis of the crisis”.
She said doctors in London prescribed a stricter nutritional regimen, which Buhari initially resisted, adding that she eventually took charge of administering the supplements, adding them to his meals.
“After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives,” she said.
Omole noted that Buhari’s medical trips sparked rumours and conspiracy theories, including claims that he had a body double known as “Jibril of Sudan”.
Aisha dismissed the claims as absurd, blaming poor strategic communication for allowing “banal developments to metastasise into conspiracies”.
She also alleged that mistrust within the presidency, including claims of surveillance and bugging of Buhari’s office, contributed to fear and pressure during his final years.