Muhammadu Buhari
Buhari has made several trips to London for medicaltreatment since mid-2016. Initially, the presidency claimed he had a“persistent ear infection”.http://www.updatecrew.com/2018/12/buhari-open-up-to-death-rumours.html
Several high-profile figures in Nigeria, including a former
government minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, have claimed that Buhari has died and
been replaced by a lookalike from Sudan.
Tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos repeating claims
that the president is an imposter called “Jubril” have been shared and viewed
over 500,000 times.
Reacting to this, Buhari while speaking in Poland on Sunday
said the speculations were all “hopes that he had died”
“It is me,” Buhari declared, while he also stated that he
will “soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong.”
Claims about Buhari’s identity emerged a month after Buhari
returned from another lengthy medical trip to the British capital.
The earliest online mention of the claim was in a video
posted by Twitter user @sam_ezeh on September 3, 2017.
The video has since been shared more than 5,000 times on
Facebook and Twitter.
In it, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
movement, Nnamdi Kanu, speaks to his supporters and says Buhari had actually
died.
“The man you are looking at in the television is not Buhari…
His name is Jubril, he’s from Sudan. After extensive surgery they brought him
back,” he says.
In separate broadcasts on the outlawed pirate radio station
Radio Biafra, Kanu has called Buhari “Jubril Al-Sudani”.
But on each occasion, he gave no evidence for the claim.
The IPOB leader is a fervent critic of Buhari and the
Nigerian government. His movement wants a separate independent state for the
Igbo people who dominate southeast Nigeria.
On April 5, 2018, Fani-Kayode, a former government special
advisor and minister under president Olusegun Obasanjo, repeated the claim on
Twitter.
The rumour appears to have been fuelled further by a
real-life event in May 2018, when a Nigerian diplomat — Habibu Almu — was found
dead in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Nigeria’s foreign ministry said on May 14 that Almu had been
“stabbed to death” and that a Sudanese woman of Nigerian origin had been
arrested.
Sudanese police said the killing did not appear to be
politically motivated but Kanu and others have claimed the death was linked to
an apparent cover-up of Buhari’s death.
Reacting to the allegation of an impostor in Aso Rock, the
Personal Assistant to President Buhari on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, said
the intelligence of some Nigerians has been insulted by the outrageous lies
that the president is a body double.
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