Incumbent fights off clone claims

assuring a town-hall meeting in December: ‘‘It’s the real me, I assure you. I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong.’’

The rumours of Buhari’s demise spread across the country after he had spent five months in London receiving medical treatment.

‘‘Initially when we got the query if he was still alive, I dismissed it as absurd but then it spread everywhere and I realised it was serious,’’ said Dayo Ayeitan, executive director of the International Centre for Investigative Reporting in Abuja, which is leading a fact-checking project for the elections. ‘‘Even after it was rebuffed by the presidency we still get people asking, ‘Are you sure that’s not Jubril?’ ‘‘

It probably should be no surprise that the country that brought the world ‘‘419’’ scams (named after the section dealing with fraud in Nigeria’s criminal code) would be expert in fake news. Almost anyone with an email account will have received missives from people claiming to be Nigerian princes, oil executives or lottery winners who need a ‘‘processing’’ payment to transfer money out of the country, for which they promise a handsome reward.

But this time round they have to deal with Ayeitan and his Crosscheck Nigeria team, which last week debunked claims that the opposition leader’s house had been besieged, that the acting chief justice had never been to law school and that the vice-president had been the subject of a stoning. – Telegraph Group