Former First Lady Aisha Buhari has recounted how rumours within Aso Rock led her husband, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, to believe she was planning to kill him.
She revealed that Buhari began “locking his room” after hearing gossip at the Presidential Villa suggesting that she intended to harm him.
The former First Lady also disclosed that the health condition which compelled Buhari to spend 154 days on medical leave in 2017 was triggered by a disruption in his feeding routine and poorly managed nutrition.
She maintained that Buhari’s illness was neither a strange disease nor the result of poisoning.
Her account of the health episode is contained in a new 600-page biography titled ‘From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, written by Dr Charles Omole and unveiled at the State House on Monday.
The 22-chapter publication traces Buhari’s life from his childhood in Daura, Katsina State, to his final moments in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to the book, Mrs Buhari had long overseen her husband’s meals and supplements at fixed times, a routine she said helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” retain strength.
“Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support,” she recalled, adding, “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.”
The former First Lady reportedly convened a meeting with close aides, including the physician, Suhayb Rafindadi; the Chief Security Officer, Bashir Abubakar; the housekeeper; and the Director General of the SSS, to outline the feeding plan.
She explained: “Daily, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there.”
Omole narrated: “When the Presidency’s machinery took over our private lives, she explained the plan: daily, at specific hours, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oil, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there. Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support.”
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 added: “My husband believed them for a week or so,” explaining that the President began locking his room, altered minor habits and, most importantly, “meals were delayed or missed; the supplements were stopped.”
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” she stated.
The decline in Buhari’s health eventually resulted in two prolonged medical trips to the United Kingdom in 2017, amounting to 154 days, during which he transferred power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
On his return, Buhari admitted that he had been “never so ill” and disclosed that he had received blood transfusions.
Omole wrote that Buhari’s prolonged absence “sparked rumours, speculation, and even conspiracy theories.”
Mrs Buhari dismissed claims that there were plots to poison her husband.
According to Omole, her position is that the “loss of a routine, ‘my nutrition,’ was the genesis of the crisis.”
He explained that doctors in London prescribed an even more intensive supplement routine.
Initially, Buhari “was frightened and not taking them as prescribed. So she took charge of his welfare, slipping hospital-issued supplements into his juice and oats,” the book noted.
The former First Lady described the recovery as rapid, saying: “After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives.”
The book added: “‘That,’ she says, ‘was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness.’”
Omole noted that critics argued Buhari’s dependence on hospitals in the United Kingdom highlighted the shortcomings of Nigeria’s healthcare system.
He wrote that a “more compassionate perspective” acknowledges that a man in his seventies may need specialised medical attention “not readily available in Nigeria”, after “decades of underinvestment.”
He also pointed out Buhari’s consistent practice of transferring authority to his deputy during medical absences, which he said ensured “institutional propriety, even during personal health crises.”
The book further exposed an atmosphere of mistrust within the Presidency.
Mrs Buhari alleged that there was surveillance, including the planting of listening devices in the President’s office and the replaying of private conversations, stating that fear and conscience “contributed to taking his life.”
She also dismissed the long-standing claim that Buhari had a body double, widely referred to as “Jibril of Sudan,” describing it as absurd and blaming poor government communication for allowing ordinary developments to grow into widespread conspiracy theories.
