By Adesina Soyooye

Reveals husband’s office was bugged

The immediate past First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari, has, for the first time, spoken about the health crisis of her late husband, President Muhammadu Buhari during his 153 days medical vacation in the United Kingdom. She revealed what led to the crisis, and spoke about the gossips in the Presidential Villa which ultimately led to a trust deficit between her and her husband to the extent that, for perhaps, precautionary measures, the former President began to lock his room. “He believed the gossip that I planned to kill him.”  She also said about the bugging of their phones in the Villa.

Mrs Buhari disclosed that the health crisis arose because his nutrition, which she had been handling, personally, was disrupted.

Mrs Buhari’s revelations were unveiled on Monday in  a 600-page biography, titled  “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari”,  written by Dr. Charles Omole. The venue of the launch was the State House, Abuja.

In the book, she dismissed the story that her husband was poisoned. She said the problem was simply that of a simple mismanagement of his feeding routine, a broken feeding routine in 2017, or as she put it mismanaged nutrition.

Said Mrs Buhari in the book,  she had for long been in charge of her husband’s feeding routine. He had a pattern of meals and supplements she had long supervised since their Kaduna days before they landed in the Villa. “My nutrition”, she calls it. It is a pattern of meals.

On arrival at the Villa, she convened those that should know, including the Director of the Department of State Services. Her husband’s meals and supplements, she said, were served at specific hours. It is a regimen she had helped “a slender man with a long history of malnutrition symptoms” to maintain strength.

Mrs Buhari: “Elderly bodies require gentle, consistent support. He doesn’t have a chronic illness. Keep him on schedule.”

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.

“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.

But in 2017, the routine was disrupted. “Then came the gossip and the fearmongering. They said I wanted to kill him.

“My husband believed them for a week and 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”. This, she revealed  culminated in Buhari’s two extended medical trips to the United Kingdom, totalling 154 days in 2017, during which he ceded authority to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.”

His long  absences “sparked rumours, speculation, and even conspiracy theories.

In London, she said, doctors prescribed an even stronger regimen of supplement.

But  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 revealed.  That did the magic.

Mrs Buhari described the turnaround as swift, and noted:  “After just three days, he threw away the stick he was walking with. After a week, he was receiving relatives”

“‘That,’ she  saud ‘was the genesis, and also the reversal of his sickness,’” it was stated in the book.

There was also mistrust around the Presidency.

Mrs Buhari spoke about surveillance, the bugging of the President’s office with listening devices and playback of private conversations. “Fear and conscience contributed to taking his life.”

Mrs Buhari also dismissed the rumour that Buhari had a body double, popularly known as “Jibril of Sudan.” She dismissed it as absurd, and argued that poor strategic communication in government allowed simple, banal developments to metastasise into conspiracies.