Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has revealed that her late husband, President Muhammadu Buhari, once believed rumours within Aso Rock that she planned to kill him, a development she said affected his health and feeding routine.
Mrs Buhari made the disclosure in a newly released biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, authored by Dr Charles Omole and unveiled at the State House on Monday.
According to the book, the rumours created fear and mistrust around the President, prompting changes in his habits, including locking his room and disrupting a carefully managed nutrition plan overseen by his wife.
The former First Lady also attributed Buhari’s prolonged illness in 2017, which led to 154 days of medical leave in the United Kingdom, to a breakdown in his feeding routine rather than poisoning or any mysterious ailment.
The 600-page, 22-chapter biography traces Buhari’s life from his childhood in Daura, Katsina State, to his final moments in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
The book noted that Mrs Buhari had for years supervised her husband’s meals and supplements, a regimen she said helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” to remain strong.
“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.”
Mrs Buhari was said to have convened a meeting involving close aides, including the President’s physician, Dr Suhayb Rafindadi; the Chief Security Officer, Bashir Abubakar; the housekeeper and the Director-General of the Department of State Services, to explain the feeding 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 later collapsed amid rumours and fear.
“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, adding that Buhari began locking his room and altering his habits, while “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, the book noted, culminated in Buhari’s extended medical trips to the UK in 2017, during which he transferred power to then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Upon his return, Buhari reportedly admitted he had “never been so ill” and had received blood transfusions.
Omole wrote that the President’s long absences fuelled rumours, speculation and conspiracy theories, which Mrs Buhari firmly dismissed, insisting that the crisis stemmed from the disruption of his nutrition routine.
In London, doctors reportedly prescribed a more intensive supplement regimen.
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,” the book stated.
The former First Lady described the recovery as rapid.
“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 added.
While critics faulted Buhari’s reliance on foreign medical care, Omole argued that a more empathetic view recognises the need for specialised treatment for an elderly leader after years of strain and underinvestment in the health sector.
The book also highlighted Buhari’s habit of formally handing over power during his absences, describing it as evidence of respect for institutional order.t further revealed what it described as a climate of mistrust within the Presidency, with Mrs Buhari alleging surveillance, bugging of the President’s office and the playback of private conversations, which she said fear and conscience “contributed to taking his life.”
She also dismissed claims that Buhari had a body double, popularly referred to as “Jibril of Sudan,” describing the rumour as absurd and blaming poor strategic communication for the spread of conspiracy theories.