By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
The former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has said pneumonia was her late husband’s ailment, and not the widely-publicised cancer – pulmonary lymphoma and/or leukemia.
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Aisha’s revelation is in the book “From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari,” authored by Dr. Charles Omole.
It also revealed that the final days of President Buhari’s tenure, after his eight-year reign, were traumatic for the family due to the former president’s serious health challenges. Buhari was in his eighties when he completed his two terms.
Aisha Buhari recounts: “The final days were difficult. ICU for some days, then the ward, then the slide.
“The last three days were the worst.”
The book quotes Aisha’s account: “After leaving office, in his final year before passing, phone calls increased and transatlantic trips became more frequent.
“The family’s calendar was filled with funerals and flights. He had gone to the UK, as he often did, to repair a tooth and enjoy the summer air. She stayed behind in Abuja, mourning a nephew, then returned to London before going back to Nigeria when an uncle died.
“Her account of his illness and death is tender, granular, and unflinching. He had been a soldier in the bush for 30 months, mostly in the South-South, soaked by rain in uniforms that dried on his body.
“Decades later, she believes, the cold had lodged in his lungs and bones — exacerbated by office air-conditioning.
“There had been smoking in his earlier life, she concedes. Age did the rest. Pneumonia was the last adversary.”
The biography noted that Buhari’s children moved in and out of hospital corridors, with one daughter spending the night before his last at his side.
When he deteriorated, doctors diagnosed acute pneumonia — a diagnosis that sat uneasily with the public’s hunger for a more precise explanation.
“Pneumonia doesn’t usually kill people,” she was asked.
She agreed but replied, “It can, especially with old age, and perhaps with a lifetime’s exposure to cold and dust in the field.
“He always coughed, even when he laughed.
“Hospitals have an unspoken language — an innate grammar that the living never fully master: the subtle change in a patient’s breathing, a nurse’s ability to interpret coldness in a foot as if reading scripture, and pillows becoming strategic tools.”
‘I couldn’t lift his shoulders’
Aisha recalled trying to lift her husband’s shoulder to place a pillow recommended by a Gambian nurse, intended to alleviate pneumonia’s grip on his lungs.
“They counted together, ‘One, two, three,’ but they couldn’t shift the weight, which in her hands felt like 50 kilograms of her husband and their shared history.
“Instead, they inserted the pillow sideways, symbolizing a gesture of compromise. ‘Are you okay now?’ she asked. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied.
“There were shifts and prayers, the rotation of children who slept beside him, the young Nigerian doctor she liked, X-rays taken in the morning and again later with a mobile unit, and fragile optimism after sputum tests came back without the dreaded diagnosis.
“It was pneumonia, they said, but at his age, pneumonia can be sovereign. At 2 p.m., she told him she would go home to rest, bathe, pray, and return. He nodded, eyes closed, occasionally opening them in that gentle, restless manner of the ill, as if gauging the distance between resignation and will.
“She called an Uber — since state cars had gone with the doctors — and left.
“In the house, she lay down and felt it: a strange pull, a disturbance that made the clock’s minute hand sound louder than it should.
“Let’s go back to the hospital,” she told Yusuf. It was 4 p.m., the exact time, she later learned, when his breathing changed and then ceased.
“We rarely arrive at the threshold of death before it happens. We only feel it as a tremor behind the door.”
‘Not cancer’
Aisha addressed rumors that her husband may have died of cancer, stating that the diagnosis they received indicated pneumonia.
“Other sources reported lung-related cancer, specifically pulmonary lymphoma. Experts note that diagnosing pulmonary lymphoma can be challenging, as its symptoms and scan appearances may resemble pneumonia.
“Those claiming Buhari died of cancer might have misinterpreted publicly leaked symptoms.
Aisha insisted the official diagnosis was pneumonia.
BBC
Public reporting described a “prolonged illness,” with some sources citing leukemia. The BBC‘s coverage noted a “brief illness” and burial in Daura two days later; The Guardian mentioned a “prolonged illness” in London; other outlets, including advocacy sites, reported leukemia; Britannica’s biographical entry records his death in London at age 82.
Aisha’s account adds intimate details: the magazine in his hand in the ICU; the small joke about moving him to a proper ward, “since you are well enough to watch TV.” She would banter with him.
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