Nigerian president says he's not dead and hasn't been replaced by a Sudanese body double

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari had to shut down rumors that he had died and had been replaced by a body double from Sudan. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari says he's not dead, and to prove it, he gave a statement Sunday in which he was alive.

“It’s the real me, I assure you,” Buhari -- and not the Sudanese body double who supposedly had taken his place -- said Sunday in Poland, where he was attending the UN COP24 climate summit. “I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong.”

Buhari, who was elected in 2015 and will seek re-election in February, has been in ill health throughout his presidency.

Rumors of his premature death started in 2017 when Buhari spent seven weeks in London for medical treatment. The nature of his ill health has never been revealed to the public.

The conspiracy theories abated when Buhari returned to the African nation, but increased again last month when opposition leaders and separatists claimed he had been long dead.

The repeated claims spread on social media and in YouTube videos alleging the Nigerian leader was actually an imposter from Sudan named “Jubril.”

In a statement released by the president’s spokesman Garba Shehu, Buhari said: “A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill health. Some even reached out to the vice president to consider them to be his deputy because they assumed I was dead.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.