Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has labeled the speculations that President Muhammadu Buhari is dead and the occupant of the office of the President is a certain Jubril from Sudan as ridiculous.
Obasanjo, who was delivering a speech at a youth mentorship session in Ogun on Sunday, described the rumour as an example of abuse of social media usage.
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has often claimed without proof that President Buhari is dead.
The former President recalled how someone once came to him see if he thought the rumour was true.
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He said, “Somebody came to me, in very high hope, and said, ‘this talk about Buhari not being Buhari…’. I said, ‘do you believe this?’ He said, ‘well, it is in the social media’. I said ‘Buhari died and we will not know that Buhari has died? And they will bring us somebody from Sudan to be Buhari?’
“It’s ridiculous to the extreme. But you have it in social media and you see people believing it. Social media have done good but it can be abused and misused.”
The rumour is filled in part by the presidency’s refusal to disclose the status of Buhari’s health whenever he goes on a medical trip.
The president had to personally dismiss it in 2018 while speaking at a town hall session with Nigerians in Poland.
“It’s the real me, I assure you. I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong,” the president had said.
“A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill-health. Some even reached out to the vice-president to consider them to be his deputy because they assumed I was dead.”
