The Quiet Birthday of Aisha Buhari

Power has a sound. It hums with convoys, cameras, and careful choreography. Silence, by contrast, can feel almost radical. On February 17, Aisha Buhari turned 55 far from Abuja’s ceremonial rhythm.

This year, the former First Lady reportedly marked her birthday in Saudi Arabia. She was there for Umrah, accompanied by her daughter Hanan. During the visit, she and her family were hosted by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a fellow Adamawa native.

The contrast with earlier years is striking. In 2022, her birthday drew national attention, complete with the much discussed Dubai cake presentation organised by governors’ wives. That spectacle carried its own political subtext and its own backlash.

Now, the register is different. Since leaving office in 2023, Aisha has retreated into a more private cadence: close family, select friends, fewer orchestrated gestures. The performative layer has thinned.

This seems more like recalibration than irrelevance. As First Lady, she cultivated an outspoken persona, usually diverging from official scripts. Her Future Assured initiative focused on women and children, building a constituency that extended beyond Aso Rock’s protocols. Yet public life in Nigeria can be merciless. The same way visibility invites scrutiny, candour invites friction. Stepping back, in that sense, reads less like withdrawal and more like prudence for Aisha.

Therefore, during this birthday month, it was devotion that replaced display. Nevertheless, recognition persisted. As media houses aired tributes, associates, including Florence Ajimobi, posted public messages wishing her peace and longevity, all showing that the machinery of acknowledgement remains, even without the apparatus of office.

What emerges is a portrait of transition handled without rancour. At 55, former First Lady Aisha’s birthday did not dominate headlines but unfolded in prayer, in private company, in a city millions visit seeking absolution. The spotlight may have dimmed, but the stage, it turns out, was never the point.