iDeemlawfulFormer First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has disclosed that her late husband, former President Muhammadu Buhari, at a point began locking his bedroom door after aides allegedly told him she was plotting to kill him.
Aisha made the startling disclosure in a newly released 600-page biography titled “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,” written by Dr. Charles Omole and presented at the State House on Monday. The book traces Buhari’s journey from his childhood in Daura, Katsina State, to his final days in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to Omole, the former First Lady explained that rumours and internal intrigue within the Presidential Villa triggered a breakdown of trust between her and Buhari during his health challenges in 2017.
“Then came the gossip and the fearmongering. They said I wanted to kill him,” Mrs Buhari was quoted as saying.
“My husband believed them for a week or so,” she recalled, adding that the President began locking his room, altering small routines, and significantly missing meals and supplements.
Aisha said Buhari’s illness, which resulted in his 154-day medical leave in the United Kingdom in 2017, was not due to poisoning or a mysterious ailment as widely speculated, but rather the disruption of a carefully regulated diet.
“He doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule. Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support,” she said.
She explained that before relocating to Aso Rock, she personally monitored Buhari’s meals and supplements, which helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” sustain his health.
“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’, a pattern of meals and supplements she had long overseen in Kaduna before they moved into Aso Villa,” Omole wrote.
The former First Lady said she convened a meeting with close aides, including Buhari’s physician, Dr. Suhayb Rafindadi; Chief Security Officer, Bashir Abubakar; the housekeeper; and the then-Director General of the DSS, to preserve the dietary regimen.
“Daily, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there,” she recalled.
However, she said the arrangement collapsed after rumours spread that she intended to harm her husband.
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” she lamented.
The biography noted that the situation deteriorated, leading to Buhari’s two extended medical stays in London, during which he temporarily transferred power to then-Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
After his return, Buhari reportedly admitted he had been “never so ill” and confirmed that he received blood transfusions.
Aisha also rejected claims that the former President was poisoned or replaced with a body double popularly referred to as “Jibril of Sudan.”
“That story is absurd,” she said, attributing the rumours to poor communication from the Presidency that allowed misunderstandings to spiral into conspiracy theories.
Omole observed that while Buhari was criticised for seeking treatment abroad, others viewed it as evidence of the weaknesses in Nigeria’s healthcare system.
He wrote that Buhari’s decision to hand over power during medical absences reflected “institutional propriety, even during personal health crises.”
The book further depicts a tense environment in Aso Rock, with Aisha alleging that the President’s office was bugged and conversations secretly recorded.
She claimed that “fear and conscience contributed to taking his life,” stating that the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia around the Presidency took a heavy toll on the late leader’s health.
“After just three days [of resuming supplements in London], he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives,” she recalled, describing the turning point in Buhari’s recovery.
“That,” she concluded, “was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness.”
