In Nigeria, some conspiracy theories never truly die, they just hibernate until they rear their heads again. That is what happened upon the passing of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who reportedly died in a clinic in London, England, on the afternoon of July 13. The cause of death was not disclosed.
What should have elicited a period of national sorrow promptly descended into a frenzy, dredging up a long-standing debate about the late Nigerian president: Did Buhari really die in 2017, being replaced thereafter by a look-alike? Across X, where news of the death was announced by Buhari’s spokesperson, skepticism ran wild. “Buhari died just two weeks ago, and it seems he had died a long time ago. It feels kind of weird. The silence after his burial is suspicious,” one user posted.
Others had already dismissed the news as the final act of a drama that began with rumors of his alleged death years earlier. “Can you mention the hospital he died in?” asked Ikenna Obi, a 31-year-old digital marketer. In downtown Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria, an elderly grocery trader laughed upon hearing news of the death, saying it was actually the ex-president’s impostor who had died.
Lekan Israel, a navy official in his early 50s, questioned the footage showing the president on life support in a London clinic. “They only showed when he was on the sickbed with oxygen, but they didn’t show the corpse. Is that how it’s supposed to be done? Even the pope’s face was displayed to the world during his burial,” he said.
Buhari, who became the first opposition candidate to unseat an incumbent president in Nigeria, may also be the first political figure in the country to have “died” more than once — thanks to a viral conspiracy theory that dates back to 2017. That year, while the former president was on an extended medical trip to the United Kingdom, a British politician named Eric Joyce posted a series of tweets, one of which read, “Very sad to learn of the death of President Buhari, whom I campaigned for. Thoughts with his wife and family. #buhari.” Although Joyce provided no evidence, the fact that a foreigner could make such an extraordinary claim without any rebuttal from the Nigerian government lent credence to the theory about Buhari’s identity that would take root months later.
Buhari’s notoriously frequent public absences only deepened the mystery. Before jetting to London that spring, he handed the reins of office to his vice president, leaving the populace in the dark about the nature of the ailment for which he was receiving treatment. While Nigerians suspected that the president’s health was fragile, they were implored to pray for his speedy recovery. This deep secrecy about his health allowed alternative explanations to fill the void and “further fueled the recirculation of the conspiracy theory,” according to Caleb Ijioma, executive director at the fact-checking organization Roundcheck.
If the president had died, as Joyce’s tweet suggested, he would have become Nigeria’s second civilian president to die in office — the first being Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2010. More than 100 days passed before Buhari, ostensibly in good health, returned to the country and was said to be working from home because, according to a spokesperson, the president’s office had been overrun by rodents after months of disuse. Not many Nigerians bought the news, however. “You see, after 2017, when he traveled to London, that man [Buhari] no come back. Make we tell ourselves the truth,” said Israel, the navy official, alternating between English and pidgin. “Even [President] Joe Biden said it when he was making a speech in the White House that it’s only in Nigeria that dead people rule for so many years. What does that imply?” Israel was referring to a viral, 47-second deepfake video from 2023 in which Biden appeared to say, “Nigeria is the only country where a dead man has been ruling the country for six years without them knowing.” The clip had been manipulated from a BBC broadcast about a migration scheme involving the U.K. and Rwanda.
The conspiracy narratives deepened into a mainstream belief following repeated claims by Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of a separatist group known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). According to Kanu, a powerful cabal in the presidential villa, desperate to maintain its control on the presidency, had hired a Sudanese impostor named Jubril al-Sudani to replace a deceased Buhari. In a string of broadcasts from his London-based station Radio Biafra, the provocative leader contrasted pictures and videos of Buhari and the supposed look-alike, emphasizing alleged discrepancies in palm prints, changes in the shape of his nose and earlobes and disparities in his speech. In one such broadcast, he asserted that Buhari had stopped tucking the strap of his nose mask behind one ear to avoid damaging “a silicone disguise.” Kanu’s “Jubril from Sudan” theory thrived off the mysterious death of a Nigerian diplomat in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 2018, which he linked to the supposed cover-up.
Elsewhere, Kanu’s grand assertions about Buhari’s demise and the body double were based on photoshopped images, bogus headlines and sham audio remixes, including misconceived social media posts. He cited a 2020 tweet by Buhari’s daughter, which read, “The one person who’s supposed to be in this picture isn’t — my Baba,” as further proof of his claims. Despite these, the Nigerian government “never gave Nigerians evidence to refute what Kanu was saying, which made it a national rumor,” argued Joseph Ebegbulem, an academic in political science at the University of Calabar.
As word of a rejuvenated Buhari spread across beer parlors and commercial buses, the narrative evolved. Depending on who you asked, Nigerians began calling the alleged impostor either “Jibril” or “Jibrin.” The name “Jubril” slowly changed to “Jibril,” which is the Arabic version. “Jibrin” came about as a common mispronunciation by Nigerians who don’t speak Arabic. Just like the rumor itself, the name kept changing, depending on who was telling the story.
Before long, it was alleged that the impostor had fled during a trip to Cuba, prompting the inner circle to contract a second body double named Yusuf Abubakar from Niger. It was at this point that Buhari felt the need to break the silence, declaring at a Nigerian gathering in Poland in December 2018, “It’s the real me, I can assure you.” He would even pin the clip of his response to the top of his Twitter X page.
Even as it appears outlandish, belief in the “Jubril from Sudan” conspiracy theory hints at deeper revelations about governance in Nigeria, mirroring “a significant trust gap between the government and the populace,” noted Ijioma, the fact-checker. Given its inclination to withhold information and suppress dissent, the Buhari administration acted more like a cult than a democratic entity, creating feelings of distrust that ran deep. Just days before news of Buhari’s passing last month, his former presidential spokesperson launched a book, admitting that the rodent story was a complete lie invented to shift public attention from the president’s declining health. Meanwhile, Ebegbulem believes that the conspiracy theory thrived because of resentment from marginalized ethnic groups. “The Buhari issue came as a result of the Igbos [members of one of Nigeria’s major tribes] feeling marginalized. As a result, these people started to bring out that theory of Buhari being cloned,” he said, adding that agitations for equality since the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 have stoked this resentment. Buhari once described the IPOB as “a dot in a circle” on national television. Later, in 2021, the president promised to treat IPOB supporters “in the language they understand.” The social media post was later deleted by Twitter, as it was then known, prompting the government to suspend the site in the country for seven months.
Even though Buhari continued to embark on medical trips to the U.K. throughout his eight-year presidency, the “Jubril from Sudan” story persisted “partly because it resonated with many Nigerians,” Ijioma said. Faith Essien, a 56-year-old English teacher in Lagos, regarded the tributes and condolences paid to the late president as performative acts, describing his death as the denouement of a cleverly written political drama staged to hoodwink the public for corrupt purposes.
“Nigeria is a home movie scene. Take it seriously at your own risk. Those who wrote the script thought they could fool 200 million Nigerians, but everybody knew that Buhari died in 2017 and was buried in Saudi Arabia. It was everywhere. Even the president of America confirmed it then,” she said, again referring to the doctored Biden clip from 2023.
In 2021, Kanu was arrested by the Nigerian authorities and continues to face trial on charges of terrorism and treason. For Nigerians like Israel, Kanu’s continued detention is retribution for “leaking the secret.”
“That’s one of the things the government are using against him, but they cannot openly say it,” he alleged.
The “Jubril from Sudan” theory will remain one of the most enduring political myths in the Nigerian imagination, showing how suspicion and misinformation caused a president to die twice.
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