Former First Lady of Nigeria, Aisha Buhari, has stated unequivocally that she has no intention of remarrying following the demise of her husband, former President Muhammadu Buhari. She described the decision as pragmatic rather than moralistic, highlighting her desire to concentrate on her family and personal projects.
“She will not remarry, she says, almost with a shrug,” Mrs. Buhari told Dr Charles Omole, author of the recently released 600-page biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, unveiled at the State House, Abuja, on Monday.
The book further elaborates her stance: “It is not a moral pronouncement so much as a pragmatic one: she has grandchildren; one husband was enough.” The biography, spanning twenty-two chapters, chronicles President Buhari’s life from his early days in Daura, Katsina State, through to his final moments in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to the biography, Mrs. Buhari’s decision challenges prevailing cultural expectations that widows must either remain devoted to their late husbands or remarry to fulfil societal norms. “In a culture that sometimes reads remarriage as betrayal or saintliness, her answer refuses both scripts. It is simply a woman naming the contours of her future,” the book states.
Okay News reports that the former First Lady plans a quieter, more balanced public life, dividing her time between her grandchildren, philanthropy, and travel. “Her plans are domestic and cosmopolitan at once. She will holiday with friends and associates. She will dote on grandchildren so they will remember her not as a moving figure behind tinted glass but as a presence in their childhood rooms.”
Mrs. Buhari will continue to manage the Aisha Buhari Foundation and oversee operations at the cardiovascular and medical centre in Kano, which has successfully conducted over two hundred procedures. The book notes: “She will host, collaborate, and extend the same ethic of care that animated her politics into a quieter, more sustainable hospitality.”
Dr Omole frames her choice as a personal reset after decades in the political spotlight. “If the republic expects a politics of eternal return, she offers a politics of departure instead: let others take the stage; let the house heal. For Aisha Buhari, her marriage served as both a refuge and a trial.”
After his divorce in 1988, President Buhari married Aisha Buhari (nee Halilu) on December 2, 1989. Born in 1971 in Adamawa State, she became First Lady upon Buhari’s return to power in 2015. The couple were married for thirty-five years and have five children.
