President Has to Tell His Nation: I'm Alive, I'm Not a Clone

Former President Obama had "birthers" to contend with when he was president. Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has deathers. At a conference in Poland on Sunday, the leader addressed persistent rumors that he had died and been replaced by a lookalike or a clone, reports Reuters. "It's real me, I assure you. I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong," Buhari said when asked about rumors circulated in social media by political rivals that he was really a Sudanese lookalike called Jubril.

The president, who is up for re-election next February called the rumors "ignorant and irreligious" and said "a lot of people" hoped that he had died last year, when he spent five months in the UK being treated for an undisclosed illness. "If I am getting harassed by anyone, it is my grandchildren, who are getting too many," he quipped. His office circulated the response in an email titled "It’s Real Me, President Buhari Responds to Cloning Allegation," the Guardian reports. (A Kim Jong Un lookalike was detained ahead of this year's summit in Singapore.)