Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, says the health crisis that forced her husband, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, to take 154 days of medical leave in 2017 began with a broken feeding routine and mismanaged nutrition.
She argued that Buhari’s illness was not a mysterious ailment or poisoning.
Her account of the health crisis appeared in a new 600-page biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, by Dr Charles Omole, launched at the State House on Monday.
The 22-chapter book chronicles his early life in Daura, Katsina state, until his final hours in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to the book, Mrs Buhari had long supervised her husband’s 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, adding, “He doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule.”
It read, “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 convened a meeting with close staff, including the physician, Suhayb Rafindadi; the CSO, Bashir Abubakar; the housekeeper, and the SSS DG to explain the plan.
She said, “Daily, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils, a touch of protein here, a change to cereals there.”
“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,” Omole narrated.
However, the routine frayed.
“Then came the gossip and the fearmongering. They said I wanted to kill him,” the book quotes her as saying.
“My husband believed them for a week or so,” she said, revealing that the President began locking his room, changed small habits, and crucially, “meals were delayed or missed; the supplements were stopped.”
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” she added.
The deterioration culminated in Buhari’s two extended medical trips to the United Kingdom, totalling 154 days in 2017, during which he ceded authority to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Upon return, he admitted to being “never so ill” and having received blood transfusions.
Buhari’s absences “sparked rumours, speculation, and even conspiracy theories,” Omole wrote.
Mrs Buhari debunked stories of plots to poison her husband.
Her contention, Omole noted, is that “loss of a routine, ‘my nutrition,’ was the genesis of the crisis.”
In London, doctors prescribed an even stronger regimen of supplements, he explained.
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,” it read.
The former First Lady described the turnaround as swift, noting, “After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives.”
“‘That,’ she says, ‘was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness,’” the book stated.
According to Omole, critics said Buhari’s reliance on UK hospitals exposed the failure of Nigeria’s health system.
A “more compassionate perspective,” he wrote, recognises that a man in his 70s may require specialised care “not readily available in Nigeria” after “decades of underinvestment.”
He also noted Buhari’s habit of handing power to his deputy during absences, which, he said, ensured “institutional propriety, even during personal health crises.”
The book also revealed a climate of mistrust around the Presidency.
Mrs Buhari alleged surveillance, the bugging of the President’s office with listening devices and playback of private conversations, saying, fear and conscience “contributed to taking his life.”
She refuted the long-held rumour that Buhari had a body double, popularly known as “Jibril of Sudan,” as absurd, arguing that poor strategic communication in government allowed simple, banal developments to metastasise into conspiracies.
Credit: Punch
