In a startling revelation from the new book From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari by Dr. Charles Omole, former First Lady Aisha Buhari has accused a powerful “cabal” of aides, relatives and elites of turning the presidential villa into a surveillance state, undermining her husband’s health and legacy.
Chapter 22 of the book, titled “Revelations at Last: After the Silence, Aisha Buhari’s Account of the Villa and the Men Who Shaped a Presidency,” paints a picture of betrayal and manipulation at the heart of government.
Aisha Buhari alleges that trusted insiders planted listening devices in private areas and used recorded conversations to influence former President Muhammadu Buhari’s decisions. She claimed that rumours were spread about her husband’s supplements and that his nutrition was deliberately mismanaged, contributing to the 2017 health crisis that saw Buhari hospitalised in London for 154 days.
“I have never seen someone in ICU watching TV,” she recounted with dark humour, recalling Buhari in a London hospital room, out of intensive care but fixated on TV.
But beneath the humour lay serious accusations. Addressing aides she accused of recording private conversations, she said, “You are not security agents.”
Mrs Buhari described her 12‑year role as more than ceremonial. She recounted packing bags, preparing snacks and ensuring her husband stayed hydrated during his gruelling 2014 campaign.
“I’m not a public person. But I realised I was part of it,” she said, stressing that grassroots acceptance, not money, secured their southern pivot.
“Money is different; power is different. You have to be accepted by the people,” she added.
According to her, the unity of 2015 fractured once they assumed office. Women who campaigned with her were excluded from Villa corridors, and she saw a ministerial list in Yola that sidelined key allies.
“From the beginning, they had already written me out,” she said.
Her daughter warned that without “concrete arrangements” with the so‑called “old men” in the system, trouble would follow.
Aisha Buhari lamented how power changed her husband. The introverted soldier she married became isolated.
“He listened for only a few months, and then became a different person, both better and worse,” she said.
She accused relatives and associates of gaining “gravitational pull” and becoming arbiters within the presidency.
“The cabal, men who could barely finish a cup of tea yet lusted after billions, bugged rooms, turning intimacy into surveillance all over the Villa,” she alleged.
Health Mismanagement, Not Poison — Aisha’s Account
Contrary to circulating rumours about poisoning or mysterious ailments, the former First Lady pinned Buhari’s 2017 health collapse on poor nutrition in office.
“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.
She described her efforts to manage his supplements prior to Villa life, a regimen disrupted after aides began sowing doubt.
“They said I wanted to kill him! He believed it briefly, locking his room and ditching lunches,” she recalled.
When London doctors prescribed stronger supplements, Buhari improved swiftly.
“After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives,” she said.
Her verdict: “That was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness. Straightforward. It was his nutrition. Badly managed.”
On Buhari’s Final Days And Cause Of Death
The book also covers Buhari’s final days. Aisha Buhari said he died of acute pneumonia, not cancer, in London at age 82, a condition she tied to a lifetime of bush warfare, smoking and exposure to cold.
“He always coughed, even when he laughed,” she said.
Rejecting rumours of pulmonary lymphoma or leukaemia, she noted that those conditions share symptoms with pneumonia, often leading to confusion.
Her recounting of his last moments was poignant: unable to lift his shoulder to adjust a pillow, they spoke quietly.
“Are you okay now?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you,” he whispered, she recalled.
She left to rest at 2 p.m., only to be pulled back by intuition at 4 p.m., the exact time of his passing.
“We rarely arrive at the threshold of death before it happens,” she said.
Following Buhari’s death, Aisha Buhari appealed to President Bola Tinubu for a “dignified burial.” She thanked Vice President Kashim Shettima and his wife, the Chief of Staff, and her son Yusuf for coordinating logistics.
She also acknowledged Group Captain Abubakar Sadiq Adamu for flying Buhari home in 2023 and for the emotional flight that brought his body home, with Air Vice Marshal Olayinka Olusola Oyesola overseeing arrangements.
Reflecting on life after her husband’s death, Aisha Buhari said the cabal’s strength was tied to him. “Their strength was him. He is no longer there, so they were afraid of my son and me!” she said, but added, “We did not come to fight.”
Dismissing those she criticised as unfit even for local chairman roles, she said, “People without capacity… He had the wrong people in the right places. He didn’t change them for eight years.”
She also blamed poor communication during Buhari’s tenure for fuelling conspiracies.
“Simple and banal developments were transformed into major conspiracies due to a lack of openness,” she said.