Former presidential aide Bashir Ahmad has pushed back strongly against what he described as a deliberate misrepresentation of remarks made by Halima Buhari, one of the daughters of the late Nigerian leader, Muhammadu Buhari.
Writing on his X (formerly Twitter) account, Ahmad said he felt compelled to set the record straight because he was physically present when Halima Buhari spoke at the book launch of Lai Mohammed, where excerpts of her speech have since been lifted and, in his words, “force-fitted into an unrelated controversy.”
Ahmad stressed that his intervention was not a commentary on the newly presented book, From Soldier to Statesman, but a correction of what he called a calculated distortion of Halima Buhari’s carefully framed remarks.
According to him, Halima Buhari’s speech was a thoughtful reflection on leadership and the human weight of public office, delivered strictly within the context of a review of the Buhari administration. He noted that the now-controversial paragraph was part of a broader, balanced address that acknowledged both criticism and appreciation of her father’s years in office.
The selectively quoted section, Ahmad explained, spoke to the realities of governing a complex country like Nigeria—where leadership often involves trade-offs, imperfect decisions, and constant public scrutiny. Far from indicting or diminishing her father’s legacy, the remarks recognised that debate over his record is both inevitable and healthy in a democracy.
“Anyone who listens to or reads her full address will clearly understand that her remarks were balanced,” Ahmad wrote, adding that reducing a long speech to a single paragraph stripped of context was unfair.
He concluded that such misrepresentation does a disservice not only to Halima Buhari and the Buhari family, but also to the memory of the late President himself—urging the public to judge the remarks in full, not in fragments.
