President Buhari: Dead Or Alive?

By Wale Sokunbi

Two major issues dominated public discourse in the past week. First, is the raging rumour on the “death”,  or otherwise, of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is officially said to be on a 10-day vacation in the United Kingdom. I first chanced on the news of the president’s supposed death on the social media about two weekends ago, and immediately waved it off as one of the fake news for which that medium of communication is becoming quite notorious.

*Buhari 

But, I had apparently underestimated the great interest and excitement that any negative news about Buhari and his government generates among certain segments of the Nigerian population.  What I had thought of as a mere tale spawned by some idle social media tattlers soon took on a life of its own, complete with intriguing plots and murderous suppositions that could dwarf any tale told by  James Hardly Chase and the other old grand masters of fiction writing.

Strangely, many of the carriers of these tales have worked themselves into a frenzy over a “development” that they believe is likely to lead to “Nigeria’s second civil war, if not an actual dissolution of the country”. Many of the purveyors of this most unlikely story can hardly keep their excitement under check, as they surreptitiously regale those with whom they choose to discuss the matter, with “details” of how the president was flown, “totally unconscious”, out of the country, and died shortly after arriving  in London.

Yet, others hold firmly to online accounts of how the president was caught “trying to commit suicide”, and rushed to the hospital, where he is now in a vegetative state, while his handlers, are trying to hoodwink Nigerians and rule the nation by proxy, as happened in the last few weeks of the late president, Umaru Yar’Adua.

Others say Buhari has even been buried, while one person said he had called the president’s spokesman, Mr. Femi Adesina, and asked him why he had joined others by telling lies on the matter of the president’s death.  The person, strangely, insisted that he did not believe that Buhari was dead, but he was convinced that his media handlers were lying that he was alive. What a contradiction!