Former First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has offered her sharpest reflection yet on a major weakness of the Buhari administration, the failure to decisively remove non-performing officials, and has warned President Bola Tinubu not to repeat the same mistake.

Her remarks appear in From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, a new book by Dr. Charles Omole launched at the Presidential Villa.

In it, Aisha argues that a mix of ageing, fear of public perception, and emotional manipulation by close aides stopped Muhammadu Buhari from enforcing performance standards.

According to her, the former President’s hesitation was rooted partly in sympathy. “As you age, performance changes,” she says, noting that Buhari often felt sorry for appointees who were struggling in office.

But a deeper restraint, she insists, was Buhari’s fear of being branded a dictator again. “If I remove him, they will say I am this and that,” she quotes him as saying.

That anxiety, she argues, soon became a shield for mediocrity. The familiar reassurance, “the devil you know”, turned into a justification for leaving failing officials in place, even when policy execution stalled.

Aisha says her own rule was direct: if an official “eats” but delivers at least 50 per cent, tolerate him;
if he “eats” and does nothing, remove him.

She says the family quietly agreed that Buhari’s refusal to sack non-performers became a structural flaw of his administration, worsened by advisers and relatives who applied flattery, emotional pressure and delay tactics, effectively turning loyalty into a shield against accountability.

Aisha recounts how security officials once suggested she temporarily leave Abuja for Daura so investigations into certain close associates could proceed without interference. She refused.

Shortly afterwards, she was informed that Buhari withdrew emotionally, speaking less, eating less.

Even after leaving office, she claims Buhari privately asked President Tinubu not to probe some of his kinsmen because he still relied on them for personal needs.

For her, that episode demonstrates the danger of emotional dependence at the top of power.

Aisha also revisits Buhari’s controversial Berlin joke, “She belongs to my kitchen… and the other room”, calling it barracks humour misfired on a global stage.

The problem, she says, was not the joke itself but delivering it beside Angela Merkel, where gender stereotypes land as policy statements.

She insists the joke never stopped her from entering any room she needed. “Power doesn’t seek permission,” she says.

Away from politics, Aisha dismisses speculation about remarriage. One husband, she says, was enough. Her focus now is on philanthropy, especially the cardiac and metabolic centre in Kano, which she says has completed more than 200 procedures, a direct response to Nigeria’s long reliance on medical tourism.

But she also frames her recollections as a manual for Tinubu and future presidents:
set boundaries early,
separate family from state,
confront incompetence immediately,
do not govern by fear of public opinion.

To illustrate the cost of hesitation, she recalls that within a week of Buhari’s 2015 victory, security informed her that half of her convoy had been reassigned to a powerful relative.

Her response was blunt: reverse it in five minutes or return to headquarters. It was reversed!

For her, that intervention was not about vehicles, it was about preventing capture before it becomes culture.

Aisha Buhari says she is not criticising her husband for sport or vengeance. Instead, she wants his legacy, and Tinubu’s tenure, to benefit from clear lessons about emotional restraint, weak boundaries and the risks of allowing personal loyalty to override national performance.

“In the end,” she reflects, “discipline became a vulnerability, loyalty became a commodity, and silence became a policy.”

Her final warning to Tinubu is implied rather than shouted: decisiveness is not dictatorship, and hesitation comes at a national cost.