Aisha Buhari, wife of former President Muhammadu Buhari, has described her late husband’s controversial “other room” remark as amusing but said it was made on the wrong platform.
Gatekeepers News reports that the comment was made in 2016 during a joint press conference in Berlin, Germany, when Buhari responded to questions about his wife’s public criticism of his administration. Standing alongside then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Buhari said:
“I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.”
The remark followed Aisha Buhari’s earlier criticism of her husband in a BBC Hausa interview, which drew widespread attention and intensified scrutiny of the couple’s public exchanges during his presidency.
Aisha Buhari’s reflections on the comment are contained in a 600-page biography, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, written by Charles Omole and launched at the State House on Monday. The book spans 22 chapters, tracing Buhari’s life from his childhood in Daura, Katsina State, to his final days in a London hospital in mid-July 2025.
According to the biography, Aisha said the remark, which triggered global outrage at the time, was a private joke between her and her husband but was ill-suited for a public and international setting.
Omole wrote that Aisha treated the comment “with the shrug of someone who knows the man and the soldier’s habit of gallows humour,” while acknowledging that it was inappropriate for the global stage.
“In the global square, irony travels badly,” the author noted, adding that the remark was often interpreted as policy rather than humour.
