In a bombshell chapter from the new book “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari” by Dr. Charles Omole, former First Lady Aisha Buhari lays bare 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 paints 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 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 claims recorded private conversations and played them back for the president.

Mrs Buhari describes her 12-year role not as a politician, but as a devoted partner packing bags, tucking snacks, and ensuring hydration during Buhari’s grueling 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 laments. 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.”

The former First Lady pined Buhari’s 2017 collapse squarely on mismanaged meals, not poison or mystery ailments. Pre-Villa, she 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.”

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 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 reveals. “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.” Her verdict: “That was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness. Straightforward. It was his nutrition. Badly managed.”

Critics long blasted Buhari’s UK trips as exposing Nigeria’s healthcare failures, but Aisha contextualises: 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 2 PM to rest; intuition pulled her back at 4 PM – his exact passing. “We rarely arrive at the threshold of death before it happens.”

Post-death, Mrs Buhari 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 and Yusuf sought no revenge: “We did not come to fight.” Dismissing them as unfit even for local chairman: “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 for Buhari-era conspiracies: “Simple and banal developments were transformed into major conspiracies due to a lack of openness.” (The Sun)

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