Fatima Buhari, daughter of the late former president Muhammadu Buhari, has alleged that her father’s signature was forged on official documents while he was in office.
The claim is contained in From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, a biography written by Charles Omole. Fatima, a forensic auditor, said she reviewed official documents and showed her father examples of signatures falsely attributed to him.
According to the book, she noted that similar concerns had been raised by others during Buhari’s presidency, although she stressed that forgery was not unique to his administration and had occurred under previous governments.
The author also quoted Fatima as saying that some of Buhari’s speeches and directives were altered after he had given approval.
“During a trip to the United States, the president spoke at a small conference. Fatima sat in the hall, watching him read. ‘You were stopping,’ she told him later. ‘It’s unlike you.’
He responded quietly: the text in his hands was not the speech he had approved. Someone had altered it. It was not a rare occurrence, he said. That day, he put the script aside and spoke in his own words,” the book reads.
It adds: “This was the kind of misrepresentation the family came to recognise: directives diluted in transit, statements rephrased to suit other agendas… It was not always sabotage; sometimes, it was the slip of a large bureaucracy. However, sometimes it was the work of a clique.”
The book further revealed that Buhari believed his office at the State House was wiretapped, prompting him to communicate non-verbally with his daughter.
“He makes a small gesture, touching his cheek as if he has a toothache, and signals that they shouldn’t speak aloud. He believes ‘they’ have a listening device planted (‘like a chip’) in his office at the Villa,” the author wrote.
“Instead, they write messages to each other on paper… This isn’t melodrama but a way for the family to cope, having learned to mistrust the walls around them.”
Omole added that some security chiefs who served under Buhari confirmed the discovery of unusual objects in the president’s office and bedroom during routine security sweeps.
0 Comments