‘For 8 Years, He Had Wrong People in Right Places’ – Aisha’s Verdict on Buhari

‘For 8 Years, He Had Wrong People in Right Places’ – Aisha’s Verdict on Buhari

Former First Lady Aisha Buhari has delivered a searing critique of the “cabal” she claims held her late husband, former President Muhammadu Buhari, captive during his eight-year tenure.

Her revelations are detailed in a new book, “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari”, authored by Dr. Charles Omole and unveiled on Monday at the State House Banquet Hall. The narrative portrays a presidency besieged by a small circle of “elderly relatives and elites,” whom she describes as a “mafia of a certain kind, (with) native intelligence bent to private ends.”

Chapter 22 of the book, titled ‘Revelations at Last after the Silence: Aisha Buhari’s Account of the Villa and the Men who fought a Presidency’, details how the core group that helped secure Buhari’s 2015 victory was sidelined in favor of this internal circle. According to Aisha, her own position worsened in 2017 when powerful figures, fearing her influence, moved to push her out of the Presidential Villa.

“‘They tried to push everybody out, including me,’ she said. ‘It is a blunt statement, and she knows it sounds blunt. But she stands firm on her boundaries: ‘This is my house. You can live wherever you like, but you cannot be in charge of my husband’s office and then also be in charge of me, his wife, inside my house.’”

The book explains that with most of her children abroad, extended family filled the Villa. Buhari’s fondness for them made him “vulnerable to all kinds of scheming and manipulations.” She describes a dynamic where the president became “‘common property.’

Relatives with no official roles begin to influence access; the people who dined with her husband during the long years of opposition are no longer seen; familiar faces are ‘locked out’.”

Frustrated by the lack of change after private appeals, she spoke publicly. She recalls her shock at the 2015-16 ministerial appointments: “‘They had money; they had people; but they did not have the power to install a president,’ she says now, almost wryly. ‘They reduced Nigeria to a sitting-room meeting.’”

Aisha attributes the public criticism of her husband’s administration directly to this cabal, whose members, she says, followed him for personal gain. The practical consequences, she recounts, were significant: “schedules shifted, meals disappeared, allies were excluded, rumours circulated that signatures were forged.”

Her summary is damning: “‘He had the wrong people in the right places,’ she says. ‘He didn’t change them for eight years.’”

The book also reveals why Aisha backed Bola Tinubu for the APC presidential ticket in 2023, while the cabal schemed for a northern successor. Her support was based on two factors: the principle of rotational power and electoral strategy.

“The first is the informal norm of power rotation. We have spent eight years in the North. Peace is priceless. Let us give the South the chance.”

“The second is electoral arithmetic: in her telling she asked key governors from the North a tough question: ‘Among your aspirants from the South, who can be sold in the North’?”

The governors reportedly named Tinubu as the most viable candidate. Aisha states that her husband did not interfere in the succession, but “the cabal around her husband, headed by Mamman Daura, she said, had other ideas.”

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