Aisha Buhari has said that suspicion among officials at Aso Rock—including claims that she intended to kill her husband—played a decisive role in the health crisis that removed President Muhammadu Buhari from public view for months in 2017.
In a new biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, the former first lady describes how rumours circulating within the presidency led some officials to treat her involvement in Buhari’s welfare as a potential threat rather than a safeguard, with damaging consequences for his health.
The 600-page book by Dr Charles Omole, launched at the State House on Monday, traces Buhari’s life from his upbringing in Daura, Katsina state, to his death in a London hospital in mid-July 2025. One of its most striking passages revisits the period of uncertainty surrounding the president’s prolonged medical absences.
According to Aisha Buhari, she had long managed her husband’s meals and supplements, maintaining a strict routine that she said sustained “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms.” She told the author that Buhari did not suffer from a mysterious or chronic illness but required consistency in nutrition and care.
That system, she said, came under suspicion after the family moved into Aso Villa. Officials, she alleged, began to view her control over his feeding and supplements with distrust, interpreting it as something more sinister. “Then came the gossip and the fearmongering,” she is quoted as saying. “They said I wanted to kill him.”
The effect, she said, was immediate. Buhari, influenced by the atmosphere of suspicion, began to distance himself from her. For a brief period, she said, he believed the claims, locked his room, altered daily habits and allowed others to take over decisions about his meals.
“The routine was broken,” she said. “Meals were delayed or missed. The supplements were stopped.” She added that for nearly a year he effectively went without lunch, arguing that the mismanagement of his nutrition triggered the decline that later became a national concern.
The deterioration culminated in Buhari’s two extended medical trips to the UK in 2017, lasting a combined 154 days, during which he handed power to the vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo. On his return, Buhari acknowledged that he had “never been so ill” and confirmed he had received blood transfusions.
Omole writes that Buhari’s absences sparked intense rumours, including claims of poisoning, palace intrigue and even the president’s death. Aisha Buhari rejects those narratives, insisting that the crisis was neither an assassination attempt nor a mysterious disease, but the product of fear-driven decisions within the presidency.
In London, she said, doctors restored what she described as a disciplined nutritional regime. Initially wary, Buhari was reluctant to take the prescribed supplements, prompting her to step in. She told the author that she discreetly ensured he took them, mixing them into his food and drinks.
The improvement, she said, was rapid. Within days, Buhari abandoned the walking stick he had been using; within a week, he was receiving visitors again. “That,” she said, “was both the beginning and the end of the sickness.”
The book also depicts a presidency gripped by mistrust. Aisha Buhari alleges that officials suspected sabotage rather than care, that private conversations were monitored, and that fear and conscience shaped decisions at the highest level.
She also dismisses the long-running claim that Buhari was replaced by a body double, known as “Jibril of Sudan”, describing it as a symptom of a broader failure of communication that allowed suspicion — first directed at her, and later at the presidency itself — to spiral into conspiracy.
