Buhari believed Aso Rock gossip that I planned to kill him – Aisha Buhari

Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has disclosed that her husband, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, “began locking his room” following gossips in Aso Rock that she planned to kill him. 
 

The ex-First Lady said the health crisis that forced Buhari to take 154 days of medical leave in 2017 began with a broken feeding routine and mismanaged nutrition. 
 

Her account of the health crisis was shared in a new biography: “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,” authored by Dr. Charles Omole, launched at the State House on Monday, Dec. 15. 
 

The book chronicles Buhari’s early life in Daura, Katsina State, until his final hours in a London hospital in mid-July 2025. 
 

According to the book, Aisha 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.” 
 

A part in the book reads: “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 called a meeting with close staff, including the physician, Suhayb Rafindadi; CSO, Bashir Abubakar; housekeeper; and SSS DG to explain the plan. M

She said as Omole narrated: “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.” 

However, the routine frayed. 

“Then came the gossip and the fear mongering. They said I wanted to k!ll him,” the book quoted 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.” 
 

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.

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