Follow Us on Google
From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Wife of late President Muhammadu Buhari, Aisha Buhari, has revealed how close associates of her late husband, referred to as cabal planted bugs, sabotaged Buhari’s meal and almost killed while in office.
This revelation was contained in a book ‘From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,’ written by Dr. Charles Omole.
The former First Lady exposed the dark underbelly of Aso Villa, accusing a powerful cabal of aides, relatives and elites of turning the presidency into a surveillance state that undermined her husband’s health and legacy.
Titled “Revelations at Last: After the Silence – Aisha Buhari’s Account of the Villa and the Men Who Shaped a Presidency,” (Chapter 22), she painted a picture of betrayal, where trusted insiders allegedly planted listening devices in bedrooms, spread poison rumours about her supplements and disrupted the former president’s nutrition routine, sparking his 2017 health crisis that hospitalised him in London for 154 days.
“I have never seen someone in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) watching TV,” Aisha recounted with dark humour from a London hospital room, where Buhari, out of intensive care, observed the world amid flickering screens. But beneath the jest, lay deeper fears: “You are not security agents,” she blasted the aides she claimed recorded private conversations and played them back for the president.
She described her 12-year role not as a politician, but as a devoted partner packing bags, tucking snacks and ensuring hydration during Buhari’s gruelling 2014 campaign. “I’m not a public person. But I realised I was part of it,” she admits, crediting grassroots acceptance over money for their southern pivot: “Money is different; power is different. You have to be accepted by the people.”
According to her, the victory in 2015 shattered that unity. Campaign women vanished from Villa corridors, access passes denied. In Yola, she spotted a ministerial list that sidelined allies: “From the beginning, they had already written me out.” Her daughter warned first: “without concrete arrangements with the old men trouble loomed.”
She said she refused to join issues with septuagenarians, calling them “mafias” – native intelligence twisted for private gain.
“Power transformed Buhari,” she lamented. “The introverted soldier who argued and teased her became isolated. He listened for only a few months and then became a different person, both better and worse. Relatives gained gravitational pull, associates turned arbiters.
“The cabal – her shorthand for men who could barely finish a cup of tea yet lusted after billions, allegedly bugged rooms, turning intimacy into surveillance all over the Villa.”
Other News
The former First Lady pinned Buhari’s 2017 collapse squarely on mismanaged meals, not poison or mystery ailments. Pre-villa, she noted that oversaw supplements for his lifelong malnutrition: “He doesn’t have a chronic illness. At this age, you care for them like a child; immune systems are not the same,” she said.
In a final meeting with his physician, SO, housekeeper and SSS DG, she laid out the schedule: “daily, at specific hours, cups and bowls with tailored vitamin powders and oils.”
But the staff sowed doubt: “They said I wanted to kill him. Buhari believed it briefly, locking his room and ditching lunches. For a year, he did not have lunch,” she revealed. “He maintains a routine. They mismanaged his meals.”
London doctors prescribed stronger supplements, which she hid in oats and juice. “After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives. That was the genesis and also the reversal of his sickness. Straightforward, it was his nutrition; badly managed,” she said.
Critics long blasted Buhari’s UK trips as exposing Nigeria’s healthcare failures, but Aisha contextualised that he handed power to Osinbajo, honouring the constitution amid rumours of body doubles.
Mrs. Buhari also recounted Buhari’s final days, saying he actually died of pneumonia and not Cancer. According to her, Buhari’s death at 82 in London stemmed from acute pneumonia, tied to a lifetime of bush warfare, smoking and cold exposure: “He always coughed, even when he laughed.” Rejecting cancer rumours like pulmonary lymphoma or leukemia, she noted that symptoms mimic pneumonia.
The last hours haunt: unable to lift his shoulder for a pillow, she compromised sideways. “Are you okay now?” “Yes, thank you,” he whispered. She left at 2pm to rest; intuition pulled her back at 4pm, his exact passing. “We rarely arrive at the threshold of death before it happens.”
Post-death, Mrs. Buhari thanked President Tinubu for a “dignified burial,” Vice President Kashim Shettima and wife, Chief of Staff, and son, Yusuf, who coordinated logistics. She also gave special thanks to Group Captain Abubakar Sadiq Adamu, who flew Buhari home in 2023 and his body in death: “An emotional flight for all.” Air Vice Marshal Olayinka Olusola Oyesola coordinated seamlessly.
She concluded by describing the cabal as powerless now. “Their strength was him. He is no longer there, so they were afraid of my son and me,” she said.
She emphasised that she and her son, Yusuf sought no revenge. “We did not come to fight,” she stated, dismissing them as unfit even for the local chairman. “People without capacity. He had the wrong people in the right places. He didn’t change them for eight years.”
Also she blamed poor communication for Buhari-era conspiracies, saying, “Simple and banal developments were transformed into major conspiracies due to a lack of openness.”
