As
rumours insinuating that president Muhammadu Buhari may have
died,slowly dies down, Wale Sokunbo has spoken about why the hearsay
spread really fast.
President Muhammadu Buhari
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.
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!
And the tale of the president’s death has not been limited to
Nigeria. I have received calls from friends in the UK who say that the
Nigerian community in London is agog with the news of Buhari’s death and
how it is likely to throw Nigeria into turmoil. As one of the callers
put it, “every Nigerian over the age of 25 in London has been talking
about nothing other than the impending trouble in Nigeria over “Buhari’s
death”, in the past one week.
Ask the local weavers of these intriguing tales and you will hear
that “with the president now dead, the people in Northern Nigeria have
vowed not to accept the constitutional provision that the vice
president, who incidentally is Prof. Yemi Osinbajo from the South –West,
becomes the president”. Not only that, they will tell you that the
recent meeting of the Northern Governors Forum with some of the nation’s
former leaders from the North, was called to pressurise VP Osinbajo to
either resign or face death, so that he would not aspire to the office
of president when Buhari’s death is announced. Some even said Osinbajo
was already being held hostage in Abuja. The story goes further that the
Nigerian strongmen from Southern Nigeria, such as ex-president Olusegun
Obasanjo, have vowed to resist the move of the Northerners, hence the
need for all Nigerians to begin praying violently for Osinbajo so that
he is not killed by Northerners, as they have vowed to destroy the
country if Buhari dies by any means, whether natural or otherwise
When all these scary suppositions are woven around the antics of
some Fulani herdsmen who have actually been holding Nigerians of other
tribes to ransom and killing them in large numbers in different parts of
the country; the recent DSS clampdown on the Christian cleric, Apostle
Suleiman of the Omega Fire Ministries, for calling on Christians in the
country to defend themselves when herdsmen attack them; and the
Christians in Southern Nigeria who are themselves getting into a frenzy
over the Apostle Suleiman matter, it is not quite out of place for
anyone to believe that Nigeria is about to become a cauldron wherein the
different ethnic and religious groups will take up arms and engage
themselves in a fight to the finish that will lead to the breakup and
eventual destruction of the country.
Where, exactly, does one begin unraveling these troubling
suppositions? Already, pictures of the president with his wife, and with
Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, which were recently released by
the president’s handlers, have been disputed, and described as old file
pictures, by doubtful Nigerians. Concerning the matter of President
Buhari’s supposed death, it is highly unlikely that this is so.
I, personally, never get worked up over the rumoured deaths of
public figures. This is simply because the death of a public figure like
Buhari, in which different people have different stakes, cannot be
hidden for long. So, why would anyone hide it at all? And, why would any
Nigerian, in the manner of the proverbial groom to whom a bride is
being taken, break his back while trying to catch a glimpse of the bride
by climbing a fence?
Again, Muslims bury their death within 24 hours of their demise. If
Buhari were to have died when he was rumoured to have passed on almost
two weeks ago now, he would have been buried. No political suppositions
or calculations will make true Muslims postpone the burial of their
dead. So, we can safely assume that Buhari did not die when he was first
said to have passed on, and he also had not died up till yesterday
evening, otherwise the country would be preparing for his burial today.
So, why are some Nigerians troubling themselves and, where did all the
rumours of death come from, in the first place?
The simple truth is that many Nigerians who harbour ill will
against some of their leaders that they do not like and can do nothing
to remove immediately, have developed itchy ears that seek to “hear”
every evil and believe every evil about these leaders. In this task, the
social media has become a veritable tool for the dissemination of
jaundiced news and views to titillate the ears of such people. As if all
these are not enough trouble for one country, some of the people of the
South-South are said to have determined to financially strangulate
Nigeria to bring Buhari to his knees, while some of the South-East
citizens are said to be bent on breaking away from Nigeria. If these
worrisome claims are not enough to throw well meaning Nigerians and our
compatriots in the Diaspora into emotional turmoil, I wonder what else
can.
As Mr. Tony Okoroji reportedly said in a recent Saturday Breakfast
programme on television, Buhari is daily being killed on social media
where there is an ongoing war to control and guide the minds of youths
and other vulnerable Nigerians to detest him. Crude propaganda is being
deployed as ethnic and religious missiles to turn the hearts of
ordinary Nigerians against the president and his administration. And,
all these are being done to gain advantage over him and the ruling APC
on the Nigerian political chessboard in the run up to the 2019
elections. With all the ethnic and religious tension being given vent
on social media, Nigeria needs to be careful to avoid a degeneration of
thinly veiled hostilities among its various peoples and religions, to
genocide.
It is time to stop the dangerous incubation and propagation of
ethnic and religious animosities on social media. It is also time to
check the war across the nation’s social classes. This country is in
deep shit, and we all need to keep our heads and put heads together and
on how to get the country back on track, instead of these endless
battles against our imaginary enemy in Aso Rock.
Back to Buhari. The president’s media handlers have said he will be
back in the country this Friday, which is just 48 hours away. Let all
tingling ears take a break and await either the president’s return , or
the news of his death or incapacitation.
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Written by Wale Sokunbo
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