Supposing Nnamdi kanu is right about Buhari?
By Douglas Anele
Before we continue our discussion today, I want to correct an error in last Sunday essay, namely, the statement that Isaac Adaka Boro’s insurrection was quickly and violently put down by the Balewa government.
Actually, the government of Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was toppled by the military coup of January 15, 1966 in which Balewa himself was assassinated and Maj. Gen. J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi emerged as the first military head of state.
So, it was Aguiyi-Ironsi’s government, not Balewa’s, that ended Boro’s Niger Delta Republic. Now, back to where we ended the discussion last week.
According to Nnamdi Kanu, Abba Kyari and his cohorts who brought in Jubril to replace Buhari failed to reckon with the fact that no two individuals, even so-called identical twins, are exactly the same in every way.
Thus, “even as Mr. Jubril looks like the late Buhari and did some few fixes to enhance the resemblance, there are still a few give-aways that, to a discerning eye, differentiated the two men.”
Aside from revealing how the plane carrying the ailing President Buhari to London allegedly detoured to Casablanca, Morocco, to pick up a life support machine, Kanu presents six main reasons to buttress his allegation that Buhari has been replaced by a look-alike impersonator, Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani.
Number one: Buhari was about 75 years when he assumed the presidency in 2015. He “looked very much his age, and appeared noticeably frail and shrivelled due to the ravaging ailments that eventually led to his death.
Jubril, on the other hand, is about 50 years old, and it shows in his gait, his vibrancy and smoother tone of his face and skin.
There are also some differences in the earlobes of both men, especially on the left side which was slightly damaged in the original Buhari but remains intact in Jubril’s.”
Two: Buhari had a noticeably receding hairline on the front crown of his head and the remainder of his hair was brittle.
Towards the end of his life the hair became very scanty and snow-white, all of which can be confirmed from photographs taken during the electioneering campaigns in 2015, at the time he was sworn in, and during his long illness.
This is in sharp contrast with Mr. Jubril who seems to have a fuller mane of hair, much darker hairline, and now wears a cap that he has refused to remove despite being dared repeatedly to do so.
Three: this concerns what one might call the linguistic argument or challenge, which is critical to the confirmation or falsification of Kanu’s claim about Buhari and Jubril.
According to him, the late Buhari was of Fulani stock and fluently spoke Fulfulde, the native language of the Fulani.
He also spoke Hausa. Jubril, the alleged impostor from Sudan, does not speak Fulfulde, but tries to speak Hausa as a diversionary tactic each time he is challenged to speak Fulfulde.
Now, the pertinent questions are: Why is Buhari no longer capable of speaking the indigenous language of his native Fulani?
If indeed the fellow parading himself as President Buhari cannot speak his mother-tongue that he spoke as a native before undergoing extensive medical treatment in London, did the treatment adversely affect only his ability to speak Fulfulde, leaving his capacity to speak English and Hausa relatively unimpaired?
Four: since February 2017, there is a noticeable “profound distance when in public between Jubril and Buhari’s family members, especially Buhari’s wife, Aisha, and son, Yusuf.
Whereas Aisha appears to be studiedly aloof, Yusuf was photographed awkwardly shaking Jubril’s hand after he returned from his long stay at a German hospital where he had been admitted and treated for injuries stemming from his bike accident.”
What precisely is responsible for Aisha’s and Yusuf’s odd behaviour towards their “transfigured” husband and father respectively?
Five: “Buhari was a very tall person, noticeably taller than other equally tall public officials such as the Senate President Saraki, who now appears to be taller than the man claiming to be Buhari…it was Lai Mohammed, the minister of information, who tried to explain this by claiming that Buhari used to wear high-heeled shoes, which he now no longer wears on the advice of his doctor, thus making him appear shorter.”
But why did the original tall Buhari wear high-heeled shoes in the first place? And what is the nature of the ailment that necessitates the ban on such shoes by his doctor?
The final point is that since Buhari’s “acclaimed recovery from his debilitating ailments and discharge from London hospital, the man who claims to be Buhari has not been travelling to London for mandatory follow-ups.
Is it medically possible that someone who was ravaged to the point of looking skeletal and underwent complex surgeries would suddenly heal to the point that he no longer needed clinical follow-ups?
Plus, when this Jubril story persisted in the wake of his US visit with President Trump, his handlers tried to defuse it by orchestrating a medical check-up stopover in London.
If such check-ups are real, why isn’t this being done on a regular basis since his so-called recovery?” the point is, despite the self-serving superstitious claims by Buhari apologists like Dr. Chris Ngige that ailing President Buhari has been miraculously and divinely healed, why is the presidency still very secretive about the nature of his ailments?
Nnamdi Kanu rejected the official explanation that rats invaded President Buhari’s office when he was in London, which made him to operate from an annex office in Aso Rock villa for a while after he returned.
The official story, he says, was a ruse to cover up the fact that all the security doors used by the late President had to be replaced because his biometrics did not match those of his body double, Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani.
Needless to say, Kanu’s allegations, if true, rank as the greatest and most evil deception in Nigerian history, alongside the extremely devious and loathsome manner British Imperialists deceived and conquered the various autochthonous communities that constitute Nigeria, misconfigured the country geopolitically and handed it to northerners at independence.
But instead of public affairs analysts and senior journalists asking the right questions and demanding that the National Assembly which has oversight over the executive should institute a thorough investigation of Nnamdi Kanu’s claims, they resorted to silly vituperations, fatuous disclaimers, name-calling and ad hominem against the IPOB leader without addressing the main issue.
On the other hand, Buhari apologists like Femi Falana and other loquacious self-styled activists have maintained a studied silence on the matter, probably because they naively think that the Jubril story is implausible ab initio or that Nnamdi Kanu is an inconsequential alarmist and upstart separatist agitator intent on embarrassing Buhari.
Some of those that have commented on the subject, out of ignorance about the meaning of scientific investigation, claim that Nnamdi Kanu has not presented any “scientific evidence” to back his claims.
But the six arguments he put forward are scientific because they empirically corroborable or falsifiable, as the case may be.
So, instead of the cheap tactic of attacking Kanu, his critics should have asked the so-called Buhari to converse publicly in Fulfulde with a Fulani fluent in the language for at least thirty minutes, or remove his cap in order to display the condition of his hair.
Without much ado the person alleged claiming to be Buhari could have easily refuted Kanu by doing any or both of the things stated above instead of the lame and unconvincing reply he gave to the Nigerian community in Poland last year that “I can assure you all that this is the real me.
Later this month I will celebrate my 76th birthday. And I am still going strong.” In my opinion, that is precisely what an impostor might say, but some knuckleheads consider it to be an adequate refutation of Nnamdi Kanu’s detailed presentation of his claims.
One senator Robert Ajayi Boroffice, representing Ondo North senatorial zone and pompously parading a doctorate degree in human genetics, tried to ridicule and debunk the impostor story by claiming, among other things, that it is impossible to clone a 75 years old human being.
Of course, Boroffice’s vaporous response shows clearly what is wrong with the educated elite and politicians in contemporary Nigeria, namely, lack of fidelity to the truth and bulimic egoism. Nnamdi Kanu insists that Buhari is dead and has been replaced by an impersonator from Sudan.
Thus, the issue of cloning does not arise because impersonation is different from cloning.
Again, the federal legislature is dominated by politicians like Boroffice who are more interested in maintaining the unjust Animal Farm status quo than in the pursuit of truth and fairness.
Hence, irrespective of the quality of evidence Kanu presents to the public, the National Assembly led by Dr. Bukola Saraki and Mr. Yakubu Dogara, both of whom are northerners, will never investigate the Jubril story.
Besides, Nnamdi Kanu is an Igbo agitating for the restoration of Biafra, and the National Assembly is dominated by northerners.
Therefore, the possibility that a northern-dominated legislature would investigate Kanu’s claim which, if true, would have serious repercussions on the present grotesque political arrangement, is virtually zero.
To be continued…
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