In her most revealing insider account yet, former First Lady Aisha Buhari has exposed the hidden dynamics of life inside the Presidential Villa during Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year tenure.
She alleges a presidency marked by “exclusion, whispered manipulation and medical missteps,” where private quarters were turned into “listening posts.”
Her testimony, featured in the new book From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari by Dr. Charles Omole, details how individuals close to the President allegedly planted recording devices in private rooms.
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According to Aisha, confidential conversations were “harvested and relayed to a small circle of power-brokers” who used the surveillance as “personal leverage” to tighten their control over the President.
Aisha refuses to dismiss the idea of a “cabal” as mere rumor, describing a network of elderly relatives who feared her “strong character.”
She recalls her daughter warning her to reach an “arrangement” with this old guard, a suggestion she rejected, refusing to negotiate with “septuagenarians.”
She notes that as soon as Buhari took power in 2015, the hierarchy was reset. Women who campaigned for him disappeared, and access became “transactional.”
Aisha admits she was “naïve” to assume competence would prevail, noting that her own partnership with her husband carried “little institutional weight” once inside the Villa.
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The former First Lady offers a startling new perspective on her husband’s 2017 medical leave.
She dismisses rumors of “body doubles” or organ failure, blaming his decline on a “breakdown in routine” after aides sidelined a dietary program she had managed for years.
She claims she convened top officials, including the President’s physician and the DG of the SSS, to outline a plan of “scheduled meals, supplements, vitamins and rest,” but the plan was ignored.
Instead, advisors allegedly told Buhari her supplements were “harmful.”
“For about a week… he believed them: doors were locked, habits changed and vitamins stopped,” she claims, leading to visible weight loss that she attributes to “mismanagement rather than mystery.”
Aisha details the President’s final struggle with pneumonia, which she says was worsened by a lifetime of environmental strain and early-life smoking.
She blames the administration’s “weakness in strategic communication” for the wild public speculation that followed his illness.
Following Buhari’s death in London at age 82, Aisha notes that the influence of the men who once controlled him vanished instantly.
“Their strength was him,” she says. “He is no longer there, so they were afraid of my son and me.”
While she insists her family does not seek retribution, her verdict on the “gatekeepers” is scathing, labeling them “men without capacity” who were unfit for the “stewardship of a presidency.”
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