Nigeria: Aisha Muhammed‑Oyebode: ‘My father treated corruption as an emergency, not a talking point’
By Zuleihat Owuiye, Mamos Nigeria
Fifty years after the assassination of General Murtala Ramat Muhammed, his eldest daughter, Aisha Muhammed‑Oyebode, reflects on loss, legacy, and the work of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF).
Aisha, now 62, was 12 when her father was killed on 13 February 1976. “It was deeply disorienting,” she says, describing the sudden silence of his absence and the “noise of expectation” that forced her to grow up quickly. “My mother had six children to raise, the youngest only six months old, and we all had futures to find.”
Despite the trauma, Aisha credits her mother, Ajoke Muhammed, with providing “the spine of our family.” Her mother’s discipline, faith, and “grace even when she was afraid” taught the children resilience and a commitment to education. “She believed fiercely in discipline, in faith, in hard work,” Aisha recalls.
Aisha’s own education took her from Queens College, Lagos, to law at the University of Buckingham, a master’s in public international law at King’s College London, an MBA in finance from Imperial College, and a doctorate from SOAS. She now serves as Group CEO of Asset Management Group Limited and CEO of MMF, channeling her father’s “strong leadership, discipline, clarity of purpose, and fierce sense of Nigerianness and Africanness” into contemporary advocacy.
The MMF’s flagship focus is girls’ education, especially in northern Nigeria, where female primary net attendance can fall below 48 percent and illiteracy among young women tops 70 percent. Aisha outlines a four‑point strategy:
1. *Economic incentives* – conditional cash transfers, school feeding, and scholarships to offset poverty‑driven dropout.
2. *Safety and access* – secure school environments and community policing so parents feel safe sending daughters to class.
3. *Local ownership* – engage traditional rulers, religious leaders, and mothers as champions of girls’ schooling.
4. *Relevance to livelihoods* – link education to tangible job opportunities, making the value of schooling clear to families.
“Educating a girl is not charity; it is nation‑building,” she asserts. “You educate a girl, you stabilise a family.”
Aisha says she holds no resentment toward the Nigerian state for her father’s death. “My father did not raise us that way. He believed in Nigeria profoundly, unwaveringly, and without condition.” Instead, she channels grief into purpose, building institutions and policies that honor his vision of a disciplined, selfless, and united Nigeria.
As the family prepares to refurbish Murtala Muhammed’s simple grave in Kano, Aisha emphasizes that true monuments live in people’s actions, not stone. “The real monument to his memory is in how we choose to live, and in the kind of Nigeria we are willing to build.
