Former First Lady Aisha Buhari has disclosed that her late husband, President Muhammadu Buhari, began locking his room following gossip at Aso Rock suggesting she intended to harm him.
Her account, shared in a new biography From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari by Dr. Charles Omole, was launched at the State House on Monday, December 15. The 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 Aisha Buhari, the 2017 health crisis that necessitated Buhari taking 154 days of medical leave began with a broken feeding routine and mismanaged nutrition. She had long supervised his meals and supplements at specific hours, a regimen she said helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” maintain strength.
“Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support,” she recalled, emphasizing that her husband “doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule.”
The biography details how the disruption started with the loss of his routine: “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.”
Aisha Buhari reportedly called a meeting with close staff, including the presidential physician Suhayb Rafindadi, CSO Bashir Abubakar, housekeeper, and SSS Director-General, to explain the care plan. She described the regimen as involving “cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there. Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support.”
However, the routine deteriorated amid gossip and fearmongering. “Then came the gossip and the fear mongering. They said I wanted to k!ll him,” she is quoted as saying. “My husband believed them for a week or so,” she added, revealing that he began locking his room, changed small habits, and crucially, meals were delayed or missed and supplements were stopped.
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” Aisha Buhari said.
The disruption in care ultimately led to Buhari’s two extended medical trips to the United Kingdom in 2017, totaling 154 days, during which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo assumed authority. Upon returning, Buhari reportedly admitted to being “never so ill” and having required blood transfusions.
