Beware of what you consume on social media. That space is a theatre
of the absurd. From matters of no consequence to serious issues, when
trends break on social media, one is guaranteed an inventive spin of all
shades. This has given birth to one of the latest entries into the
social media lexicon, which is Fake News.
Each trend and ‘Breaking News’ has its fake news version but
usually, as with all things news, they have a short lifespan. The
longest of them in recent times was the controversy that trailed
President Muhammadu Buhari’s secondary school leaving examination
certificate, which lasted for about a fortnight.
But one ‘Breaking News’ or ‘Fake News’ that has refused to go away
after many weeks is the story of President Buhari’s body double
conspiracy theory, one Jibril Aminu from Sudan, which is spreading like
wide fire. What started as a gossip shared in hushed whispers has gained
so much traction strong enough to elicit official reactions.
It was a story that broke on the clandestine medium, Radio Biafra,
propagated by its promoter and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra
(IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, who earlier this month resurfaced in Israel many
months after he was missing in action during the military’s Operation
Python Dance in his home state of Abia.
Kanu has consistently asserted that there is an imposter in Aso
Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power, with threats to expose how Jibril Aminu
was transformed to replace ‘dead Buhari’ in London. He alludes that
Jibril resembles Buhari except for a cleft ear, broad nose bridge and
teenager fresh hands.
He further claimed that the Nigerian diplomat who was murdered in
Sudan on May 10, 2018, Habibu Almu, was killed over his alleged
involvement in the recruitment of Jibril. The IPOB leader, who promised
to shock Nigerians with his revelation of how Jubril was transformed to
replace ‘dead Buhari’, while sympathizing with the family of the
deceased, urged the Sudanese police to uncover the killers of Almu.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs according to its spokesperson, Dr.
Tope Elias-Fatile, at the time had disclosed that the Nigerian
immigration attaché, Almu, was murdered in Khartoum, Sudan by a Sudanese
woman of Nigerian origin.
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, taking a swipe at Femi
Fani-Kayode, who also shares the same opinion with Kanu.
Yesterday, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) posted online,
‘President Buhari cancels his planned five-day ‘casual leave’ as a mark
of respect for victims of Boko Haram attacks across the battlefields in
the North-east zone of the country.’ Someone immediately posted: ‘Buhari
or Jibril, which one? We play too much in this country. Buhari has been
on technical leave since 2015, now Jibril is going on casual leave.’
Another quipped: “I am beginning to believe this Jibril story
because the difference between the original Buhari and Jibril Aminu is
so glaring. The body language of the real Buhari was said to work
wonders like longer electricity supply and scaring potential looters,
but we can’t say the same of this new Buhari.”
The Jibril story travelled like the speed of light when in the heat
of the crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) after its
primaries held, some leaders of the party began to vent their anger and
speak in innuendos. Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, was reported
to have said: “If I say what I know about APC, Nigerians will burn down
Aso Rock within 24 hours,” while governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle
Amosun was rumoured to have said: “If APC provokes me again, I will tell
the whole world what we were cooking that got the house burnt.”
But weighing in on the story, Shehu Sani, the Senator representing
Kaduna Central reacting on his Twitter page, discarded such report,
saying Buhari has no ‘double’. The Kaduna lawmaker urged Nigerians to
see ‘Jibrin’ as an imaginative character.Sani wrote: “There’s no one and
nothing like Jibril El Sudan. Buhari ‘Caesar’ is healthy and has no
double. But you can literally refer to Jibrin as an imaginative and
mythical character in Shakespearean Nigeria. It is natural to creatively
invent characters and promote conjectures in our theatre of the
absurd.”
While some Nigerians have helped in amplifying the rumour, using
posts and comments to express their belief and disbelief in a ‘cloned’
Buhari, others have been cropping and magnifying recent pictures of the
president in comparison with 2016/2017 images when the president was
sick and feeble.
It would be recalled that after initially spending over 50 days on
medical vacation in London, the president had in May 2017 returned to
the United Kingdom, for follow-up medical check-up where he stayed
longer than three months.
Those who buy the Jibril narrative fuss that since the last medical
extended vacation, it was a young-looking, somewhat shorter Buhari that
is in Aso Rock. The issue received some fuel last Saturday when former
President Olusegun Obasanjo urged Buhari to “do the needful and stop
inadvertently giving credence to the story.”
At the installation of Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential
aspirant, Atiku Abubakar, as Turakin Adamawa, he said: “No matter how
long we choose to feign ignorance, the news of a stranger running the
affairs of Nigeria has gained international attention.”I have in the
past few weeks received calls from different world leaders and some
concerned global investors who sought for my response over this issue
which is currently being talked about in almost every home in the
country.
“Fake news is real, but this story, whether false or true can only
be put to rest by the accused who happens to be President Muhammadu
Buhari. In 2010, many of you, I believe, still remember how it was
rumoured that I was shot dead by assassins. The news understandably went
viral immediately, and on learning about it, I came out and said I was
alive and well.”
Another Senator representing Ondo North, Ajayi Boroffice, on Monday
reportedly gave an intellectual bent to the discourse in his piece
titled ‘Buhari, the imaginative clone and human genetics’. It was not as
if Boroffice held a conference anywhere to release his alleged
statement. Again, it was a glean from the social media where he said:
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t like to involve myself in the nauseating debate
about the rumoured cloning of President Buhari and the imaginative
Jibril Aminu of Sudan because it is rubbish in the face of scientific
realities.
“As a Nigerian who bagged Ph.D degree in Human Genetics in
congenital malformations arising from chromosomal aberrations in 1975
and had Post-Doctoral Research in mutagenesis and carcinogenesis, I
consider myself as competent to comment on the needless controversy. For
a 75 years old adult to be cloned, a living cell must be obtained and
subjected to some manipulations that will convert it to totipotent cell.
The totipotent cell will now undergo embryological development that
will produce a young human fetus.
“Therefore, for the clone to look like the same man, it must be
exposed to the exact environment for a period equivalent to 75 years. It
is therefore ridiculous for anybody to think Mr President has been
cloned and that the person who is the President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria is a clone from Sudan.”
But cloning is not the dominant narrative. First, it is not logical
to clone a 75-year-old Buhari, as the science of cloning must yield to
the natural process of growth. The narrative instead is that a Buhari
look-alike is in charge at Aso Rock
Amid the rising suspicion of a Buhari double, peddlers of the
Jibril story refer to a particular incident in history. For decades,
rumours circulated in Russia that former President Joseph Stalin had a
“twin” who replaced him during certain situations. Decades after
Stalin’s death, the decoy finally decided to talk. Felix Dadaev, a
former dancer and juggler, had been ordered to work at the Kremlin as
Stalin’s body double.
For more than half a century, Dadaev remained silent, fearing a
death sentence should he dare to open his mouth. But in 2008, at the age
of 88, and with the apparent approval of the Putin regime, he finally
came forward to write his autobiography, where he explained that he was
one of four men employed to impersonate the supreme leader, taking his
place in motorcades, at rallies, on newsreel footage etc.
When the Second World War started, Dadaev was required to fight and
was so badly injured during the war that his family was told he had
been killed. Fortunately, he survived, though that “death” was the start
of a strange double life. Soon his resemblance to 60-year-old Stalin
(which got him teased in school) caught the eye of Soviet intelligence
agents, who started using him to save the real Stalin from assassination
plots and tedious public ceremonies.
Just into his 20s, Dadaev was a great deal younger than Stalin, but
make-up and the strain of war meant that he could pass for the
60-year-old. “We had all experienced so much suffering that I looked
much older than I was”, Dadaev said. Trained at the personal request of
Stalin, Dadaev attended rallies and meetings across the Soviet Union
wearing the leader’s trademark Red Army cap and heavy overcoat encrusted
with medals. He watched movies and speeches of Stalin to perfect the
mimicry of his movement and intonation.
“By the time my make-up and training were complete, I was like him
in every way, except perhaps my ears. They were too small”. In an age
before media dominated, he didn’t have to mimic perfectly Stalin’s vocal
inflections, just his look and mannerisms. He pulled it off so well
even Stalin’s closest comrades couldn’t spot the imposter.
United States and Korean scientists in 2014 cloned claimed a
75-year-old human was cloned for the production of stem cells. The study
was published in the journal, Cell Stem Cell.
This technique was recently used to create embryonic stem cells
from an infant donor. The team managed to perform the technique
successfully with two male donors, one 35 years old and the second 75.
The primary change needed was simply to extend the period in which the
donor DNA is reset by the proteins present in the egg.
So can Buhari also be cloned? The Guardian put the question to
president of the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS) Prof. Kalu Mosto
Onuoha. “I don’t know. I don’t believe so. What I do know and what I
have read is that many former leaders had several look-alikes, like
President Winston Churchill of the United States, even some actors. The
double or look-alike is used sometimes to protect the original person,”
he said.
President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Dr. Francis Adedayo
Faduyile, on his part, said: “They cannot clone an adult person and it
is not possible. The only thing is to have a look-alike.”
This is one reason why folks are skeptical and slow to shake off,
no matter how far-fetched, the tale that Aso Rock’s power brokers
organised a Buhari double to continue control over power. Another is the
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua saga.Eight years ago, Yar’Adua was pronounced dead
after long months of speculations about an illness that led to his being
flown, in November 2009, to a Saudi Arabia hospital. It was one of the
most vicious and dangerous power intrigues in Nigeria’s history, where a
small knot of family and close-knit power brokers held the nation to
ransom. There were no updates on treatment progress. There was no word
on the wild rumours flying around that Yar’Adua was already dead in
Saudi Arabia and in February 2010, he was secretly brought back into
Nigeria under the cover of darkness.
Just like Yar’Adua’s case, the nation is on the tenterhooks over a
Buhari double story that refuses to fade away. And that is because
everything about the president, including his state of health is a
classified official secret.
Source: Guardian