Buhari & Kanu
Having listened to the first radio broadcast by the leader of the
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and read the transcript of the his
second broadcast on November 17, certain matters arising from the said
broadcasts have necessitated that I conduct this exercise. My
conclusions would have been intuitively perceived by any thoughtful
person interested in truth and not sensationalism or propaganda. But, a
portion of the Nigerian populace has been taken and held hostage by
demagogues who, to the untrained eye, appear skilled in the art of
mental manipulation, but whose success in misdirecting the people is
only due to the widespread ignorance, frustration, difficulty and hunger
in the land.
Like President Delano Roosevelt said, “People who are hungry and
out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Indeed, how
can a hungry man who is not sure of a quality meal in a day, have the
resources of time and money to carry out a thorough investigation of the
facts that are being presented to him with so much force and other
accoutrement of indoctrination? No, he will rather prefer to allow the
demagogue to do the thinking for him, more so after he has inflicted
with such a sense of inferiority for being a black man residing within
the geographical space of the so called “Zoo Republic”, where nobody
does any thinking.
The hungry, frustrated person will rather than look inward and
confront his deficiencies and inadequacies, prefer to revel in the
psychological euphoria of identifying with the pseudo-liberated
“non-citizens of the Zoo Republic”, who are the only thinkers and
truthful persons in the world. The analysis of the available facts
presented below is in defence of truth, for as the holy writ puts it:
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Even though there are many factual issues in the list of 30
research findings released in the November 10 broadcast, my interest is
to address two fundamental factual allegations which are conclusive in
assessing the genuineness of this campaign and which can be resolved by
examining available records. For those who adhere to truth and eschew
sensationalism, such evidence should be sufficient to convince them and
unmask the deliberate fraud being foisted on the people.
The relevant issues:
● Did Britain know that Buhari had died, as the leader of IPOB alleged?
● Did the African Union observe a minute of silence for the
departed Buhari at its meeting in Addis Ababa on February 2, 2017, as
alleged in the broadcast?
Did Britain Know that Buhari Had Died, As the Leader of IPOB Alleged?
In the said broadcast of November 10 (the transcript is available
here), the IPOB leader proclaimed that: “Did the Queen send a condolence
message to the Buhari family and Nigerians or not? Her Royal Britannic
Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II sent a message of condolence to the family
of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and the people of Nigeria. THIS
WAS WIDELY REPORTED AT THE TIME…” And he went further: “Why did Queen
Elizabeth write a condolence letter if Buhari wasn’t dead? … In a
message of condolence, the Queen described Buhari as “one of Africa’s
pillars”. She wrote: “The death of President Buhari came to us as a
shock. He has been one of the active pillars in Africa. May the good
people of Nigeria and Africa know that our hearts are with them in these
hard times.”
1. The first published post about the president’s death was on
January 21, 2017 from a blogger who goes by the name, MRrational
Laughter, and whose blog claims to be the ‘No. 1 Port Harcourt City
Blog.’ According to the blog, “Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has
died in a London Hospital where he was receiving medical care, the
NIGERIAN MISSION IN UK has confirmed. According to the INFORMATION
RELEASED BY THE NIGERIAN EMBASSY, Buhari left the West African country
for a vacation in the U.K in order to undergo medical checks. The office
of the President is yet to issue an official statement on the
president’s demise…” Again, on January 29, the blog republished the
article under the headline “LATEST BREAKING NEWS: Nigeria’s President
Muhammadu Buhari Is Dead Confirmed By CNN-ALIVE.”
The first thing that should surprise anyone about this blog post is
the fact that with all the international protocols surrounding
presidents, the Nigerian president could die in a hospital in London,
and it was only one lonely Port Harcourt blogger who got confirmation of
the said death by the NIGERIAN MISSION IN UK and also got the
INFORMATION RELEASED BY THE NIGERIAN EMBASSY about the death. None of
the international media knew about this confirmation or information!
2. On January 30, 2017, the same ‘MRRational Laugher’ published a
post that Queen Elizabeth sent a message of condolence to Nigerians
under the headline, “Is Buhari Dead? Queen Elizabeth II sends message of
condolence.” The blogger wrote: “The Queen of Britain, Her Royal
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has sent message of condolence to the family
of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and the people of Nigeria.
There are no official reports on the speculated death of the
President and the message of condolence from the British Monarchy has
put Nigerians in state of despair. Two sources close to the Presidency
have said the President has passed on and that the photos circulating
online are those from his previous visit…” The portion of the foregoing
blog post underlined is to show the inconsistency between the earlier
post alleging that the NIGERIAN MISSION IN UK has confirmed the news of
the death of the president (which has suddenly become speculated and no
longer confirmed), and the later post.
3. By January 30, a few other blog sites had picked up the news and
tried to give it some traction and online presence. Some of the blogs
have already been taken down and some of the accounts have been
suspended. But, example of such blogs are listed below:
a.
http://www.naijanewsplus.com/breaking-news-nigerias-president-muhammadu-buhari-is-dead-confirmed-by-cnn-alive/
published on January 30, 2017;
b. https://www.currentnewsnow.com/2017/02/buhari-dead-see-queen-elizabeth-ii-condolence-message-nigeria/ of February 2, 2017;
c.
Read Queen Elizabeth II Condolence Message To Nigeria [Buhari Dead Or Alive?]
of February 3, 2017;
d.
http://www.omonaijablog.com/2017/02/buhari-dead-queen-elizabeth-ii.html
of February 3, 2017, which cited its source as
vanguardngr.local-reports.com;
e. http://www.timepostng.org/2017/02/is-buhari-dead-see-queen-elizabeth-ii.html of Febrauary 3, 2017;
f.
Buhari DEAD? …. See Queen Elizabeth II condolence Message To NigeriaThursday, 2 February 2017
of February 3, 2017;
g. https://www.naijacliq.com/news/buhari-dead-queen-elizabeth-ii-sends-condolence-message-nigerians/ of February 5, 2017;
h.
https://mrrationalblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/is-buhari-dead-queen-elizabeth-ii-sends-message-of-condolence/
of February 7, 2017;
i.
Buhari’s Death: Read President Jacob Zuma message of condolences to Nigerians
of February 10, 2017;
j. http://ngr.ng/buhari-dead-see-queen-elizabeth-ii-condolence-message-nigeria/ of February 14, 2017;
k. http://www.newstrapng.com/2017/06/is-buhari-dead-see-queen-elizabeth-ii.html of July 12, 2017;
l. http://www.naijanewsplus.com/buharis-death-see-queen-elizabeth-ii-condolence-message-to-nigeriawatch-video/
m.
FACT CHECK: Did Queen Elizabeth send condolence message over Buhari’s death?
Note that this was an attempt by this blog site to rebut the news
n. http://flywaterz.blogspot.com/2018/02/is-buhari-dead-as-queen-elizabeth-ii.html of February 2, 2018
4. There is a further point of interest concerning the republished
post about the Queen’s condolence message by currentnewsnow.com, which
is listed as (b) above. The picture of Queen Elizabeth II signing a
condolence register used in that post is a creative image from Chatham
House used by royalcentral.co.uk on October 15, 2016 in relation to the
death of King Bhumibol of Thailand.
5. There are numerous reported examples of the Queen sending
condolence messages to presidents and heads of government when sad
events occur and such instances are widely reported by the British and
international media and they are not hidden affairs left to the
reporting of bloggers. There are many examples online, but it is
important to note that the British Royal Family maintains a website on
with there are many examples of such reports.
6. Before we conclude on this first issue, even though no reference
was made to this fact in either of the two broadcasts, we might as well
address it immediately, as it relates to the sponsored campaign to make
people believe the president is dead. This endeavour has also been used
to bamboozle ignorant listeners. I am referring to the tweet campaign
of Eric Joyce, a former UK politician and soldier, on May 19, 2017,
whereby he tried to convince Nigerians that the president died in London
in the early hours of May 19, 2017.
A screenshot of his tweets and various responses to the issue are
available on Twitter. My interest here also is in the duplicity that was
displayed by the former politician, who had categorically claimed
(without providing any proof) in his tweet on May 19th that: “The
president of one of the world’s largest and most sensitive countries
DIED IN LONDON TODAY. In our main news bulletin, not a word #Buhari”,
only for him to turn around on his website’s posts to claim that it was
the duty of the Nigerian Presidency to prove that the president was
alive. He also played the race/ethnic card, which is guaranteed to upset
any insecure black person, by saying that the British Press is full of
white people who claim to be knowledgeable about the incident.
We refer to this incident to show that there are two incidents
touted by proponents of this theory fixing the president’s death in
January 2017 and also on May 19, 2017. Both cannot be true, as being
made out by the spinners of this tale.
Conclusion On Issue One
We have purposely left out of this analysis, issues of existing
international protocols about such things as the passing on of the
president of a country or the sheer illogicality of the idea that all
the people who knew of the president’s health status or who worked in
the purported London Hospital where he was being treated etc. could all
have been bought over or threatened into keeping quiet about the
president’s demise. I have simply restricted myself to showing, by
available evidence, that contrary to the standard and natural course of
events, the purported death of the president, which allegedly took place
in London, was reported only by a lonely blogger in Port Harcourt, who
mysteriously was able to obtain confirmation and information from the
NIGERIAN MISSION IN UK and the Nigerian Embassy in UK, about the death,
but later repudiated the said confirmation. It was also the same blogger
who received mysterious information about Queen Elizabeth’s condolence
message and published the same without the Royal Family or any other
international media knowing about this message. The bloggers who
republished news of the condolence message even went to the extent of
using a past picture of the Queen sending a condolence message to
another sovereign to buttress their false story. It reeks of fraud and
criminal intent, but more of that later.
In conclusion, to this part, the trend already established by this
first part of our analysis, of using bloggers to spread propaganda and
falsehood should be an eye opener. But, we will leave that commentary on
the legal and national security implications of this for now. I think
that the IPOB “leader” who condescendingly has the temerity to say about
the African race that “We Africans are stupid beyond stupidity” or that
“Our collective stupidity as black Africans didn’t start with the visit
of Prince Charles”, in cooking up this puerile plot, obviously thinks
that the brains of his followers operate on “Tiger” batteries. (pardon
the pun).
TO BE CONTINUED.
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About the Author:
Nonso Robert Attoh is a law lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus.
Written pieces and
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