The late former President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, Aisha Buhari, has detailed the intense pressure and emotional conflict behind his reluctance to dismiss underperforming appointees.
In the book, ‘From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, Aisha Buhari revealed the main reasons that “haunted” the presidency regarding ministers and service chiefs who “outlasted their prime.”
Aisha Buhari claimed her husband’s hesitation stemmed from a sensitivity to the label he acquired during his 1980s military rule.
“If I remove him, they will say I am this and that. The devil you know,” he would often say, according to her account.
She also pointed to the natural effects of aging on performance: “As you age, performance changes.”
She admitted that some aides learned to exploit this reluctance, noting that she believed the standard should be: “Even if a man ‘eats,’ if he can still deliver 50 per cent, keep him; But if he both eats and cannot perform, then he must go.”
The book’s author, Dr. Charles Omole, confirmed that the Buhari family agreed that this reluctance to fire people was a “fault” in his government.
Perhaps the most startling revelation relates to the former President’s actions shortly before his death. With the Tinubu administration launching probes into several senior Buhari-era officials (including former AGF Abubakar Malami, ex-ministers Hadi Sirika and Umar-Farouq, and former Accountant-General Ahmed Idris), the former First Lady revealed Buhari’s emotional distress.
Aisha learned that when some of Buhari’s allies were asked to step aside for investigation, he “pleaded with the new government on behalf of his kinsmen, seeking to shield them from inquiry” because he still relied on them for personal assistance.
Aisha Buhari noted that in the months before his death, he became more reserved.
The book read, “When questions about those years started emerging in the corridors of power, someone urged her to return to Daura to stay with him. ‘If you are there, they can prosecute the people,’ the warning went. She declined, stating she had no interest in confronting those she describes as illiterate in her maturity. However, the story didn’t conclude with her refusal. A few weeks later, she learned he had not spoken to the household for three days and had been eating hardly anything.
“Later still, she found out that when asked to step aside for investigations, Buhari pleaded with the new government on behalf of his kinsmen, seeking to shield them from inquiry because he still depended on them for many personal matters. Conscience is an ancient hunter.
“In the months before his death, she says he became more reserved, mostly replying with yes or no and avoiding eye contact. ‘All that I told him had come to pass,’ she remarks calmly. Shame, duty, and love, all the unpredictable forces of a shared life, dominated his final days, a man who had always prided himself on integrity.”
Buhari’s tenure saw the longest-serving set of service chiefs in modern Nigerian history, who were appointed in July 2015 and only replaced in January 2021, despite intense public criticism over security failures.