Two weeks into the presidential election 2019 campaign, a non-issue is still an issue. Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed responded to talk of a presidential impersonator on November 29. Mohammed said to journalists in Abuja: “It is idiotic to say the President is cloned. I don’t see any serious government responding to that.” But the minister’s response amounted to a response by the federal government.
The issue still attracts attention. President Muhammadu Buhari is said to have died and his place taken by an impersonator. This tale was reportedly triggered by a tweet by user @sam_ezeh on September 3, 2017, following Buhari’s recovery from an undisclosed illness. The president was treated abroad.
A report said: “A video outlining the claim has since been shared more than 5,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. In it, Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), tells his followers that Buhari had died. ‘The man you are looking at on the television is not Buhari… His name is Jubril, he’s from Sudan. After extensive surgery they brought him back,’ he says.”
Repetition of falsehood doesn’t make it true. But does Nnamdi Kanu know this truth? The controversial IPOB leader had repeated the absurdity about a week before Mohammed responded. Kanu claimed in a radio broadcast that Buhari was dead and a look-alike from Sudan, Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani, was in Aso Rock, the seat of federal power.
Kanu’s words: “Jubril is in Aso Rock… In any reasonable country around the world, the citizens should by now commence a worldwide protest to demand the identity of their president. Why is this Sudanese impostor in Aso Rock?”
If the citizens are not protesting as Kanu expects, it is because they don’t know what Kanu claims to know about Buhari. And what Kanu claims to know is an absurdity. His illogic: “There was once a rumour that Obasanjo was dead but he came out and said ‘I dey kampe.’ Jubril can’t do that because he is not Buhari. Nigeria must fall. It is going to collapse under the weight of this fraud and deception of Jubril. I am not going to make trouble. I want them to return Jubril from whence he came. We can no longer be part of this fraud.”
Some thinking is needed here: If there is a Buhari double in Aso Rock, what is the point of impersonating the president if he is unable to publicly assert that he is Buhari? If the alleged impersonator is unable to declare that he is Buhari, then it is an absurd impersonation.
Kanu deepened the absurdity by claiming that US President Donald Trump never met with the real Buhari. What he means is that the April meeting was between Trump and the said Jubril.
A report said Kanu “argued that pre-2017 photographs of President Muhammadu Buhari’s left side outer ear had a deformed lobule and a straight antihelix,” adding that those features could no longer be seen in the president’s recent photographs.
Kanu’s observation suggests that he has become an anatomist of sorts. It is absurd that he insists on the accuracy of his absurd claims. This is yet another stunt by Kanu who has moved from stunt to stunt in the course of leading the separatist group. A reasonable stuntman should know that there are limits to the stunt business. Kanu’s performance so far casts doubt on his reasonableness.
In addition, Kanu is not a credible voice. He had disappeared on September 14, 2017, while on bail. He was facing trial for “alleged offences of conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony and other related offences.” His reappearance 13 months after was as mysterious as his disappearance. His sureties had been asked to account for his whereabouts, but they seemed not to know.
Following Kanu’s disappearance, his lawyers had argued that the Nigerian army authorities should be made to produce him because he allegedly disappeared during an operation by soldiers. They described the operation as “a murderous raid, where live and mortar bullets were fired on unarmed and defenceless people, leaving 28 persons dead.” When Kanu suddenly reappeared at the Wailing Wall in the Holy City of David in Jerusalem, on October 19, it highlighted his lack of credibility.
The ridiculous claim about Buhari has been repeated by others, including Reno Omokri, a former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, and Femi Fani- Kayode, a former minister. But where is the evidence? It is a reflection of lack of clarity and confusion that some have called the alleged Buhari double “Jubril” while others have called him “Jibrin.”
Mohammed’s response coincided with Buhari’s presence in Chad for a meeting of Heads of States and Governments of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC). Buhari, who is LCBC chairman, had called the meeting towards finding a solution to the Boko Haram insurgency.
Mohammed’s words: ”So, the same Jibrin that was cloned from Sudan or Chad is in Chad now? Isn’t that stupid? They even said he is from Chad. Yet, the same President is in Chad as we speak. The same Jibrin is remembering what the President did while in Petroleum Trust Fund and he is also remembering what he did when he was Head of State between 1983 and 1985.”
The minister continued: “All the ministers do not know who is before them when they attend the Federal Executive Council meeting? The President remembers the memos he had seen or heard about in 1985 and we say he is cloned. So, Jibrin from Chad or Sudan will now remember all of these? It is too silly for the government to respond to this. It must be ignored.”
It is pertinent to focus on the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate campaigning for a second term as president. Is he an impersonator? What does Buhari need to do to finally show that those spreading this story are talking complete rubbish?
The story is food for thought. It shows negative inventiveness. A report said: “CrosscheckNigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria, comprising, among others, icirnigeria.org and The News Agency of Nigeria, has investigated this claim and found no evidence to support it.”
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