Nearly three years after the exit of the Muhammadu Buhari led administration, Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has revealed that her late Husband’s failure to follow the feeding routine she had set out for him led to his health crisis that saw him take 154 medical leave in 2019.
Very revealing was also the fact that the surprise attitude of her husband, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, began after he decided avoiding her following gossip in Aso Rock that she (Aisha) planned to kill him, leading to a broken feeding routine and mismanaged nutrition.
More shocking was the revelation by Aisha in a new 600-page biography, ’From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, authored by Charles Omole, launched at the State House on Monday that President Buhari “began locking his room” and failed to follow the feeding routine she had set out for him.
The former First Lady made it clear that Buhari’s illness was not a mysterious ailment or poisoning.
According to the book, Aisha Buhari had long supervised her husband’s meals and supplements at specific hours, a regimen she said helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” maintain strength.
While emphasizing that elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support, she restated that the Former President didn’t have a chronic illness but only needed to be kept on schedule.
The book 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.”
The former First Lady convened a meeting with close staff, including the physician, Suhayb Rafindadi; the CSO, Bashir Abubakar; the housekeeper, and the SSS DG, to explain the 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 frayed following the gossip and the fearmongering.
“My husband believed them for a week or so,” she said, revealing that the President began locking his room, changed small habits, and crucially, “meals were delayed or missed; the supplements were stopped.
“For a year, he did not have lunch. They mismanaged his meals,” Aisha revealed.
According to the narration, in London, doctors prescribed an even stronger regimen of supplements.
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,” it read.
The former First Lady described the turnaround as swift, noting, “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 stated.
