Following the death of former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari on July 13, 2025, in a London hospital and his subsequent state burial two days later, multiple Facebook posts have falsely claimed that the Nigerian government’s announcement of his death was untrue, asserting he actually died in 2017.
Buhari previously served as Nigeria’s military head of state from January 1984 to August 1985, and later as a democratically elected president from 2015 to 2023.
One such post, from a pro-Biafra Facebook page, reads: “The Nigerian government can only deceive Nigerians; they can’t deceive Biafrans. Buhari died since 2017, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB have stated it. This is Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Video demonstration in 2017/2018, stated that the man they imposed on Nigeria as a president is an impostor. Nigeria is scam.”
The post included an old video featuring Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), making these claims and displaying photos he alleged were of Buhari’s body doubles.
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IPOB is a group advocating for the restoration of the Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria, a region whose secession in 1967 triggered a three-year civil war.
Kanu is currently facing charges including terrorism and treasonable felony.
The same claim appears here, here and here. (Note: See more instances at the end of this report.)
But is it true that Buhari died in 2017, not in July 2025?
No new evidence for the debunked claim
The rumor that former President Muhammadu Buhari died in a London hospital in 2017 during one of his medical trips in his first term, and was subsequently replaced by a body double named “Jubril” from Sudan who was quietly buried in Saudi Arabia, has resurfaced.
This persistent claim was widely circulated online and continued even after Buhari himself debunked it in December 2018, ahead of his re-election in February 2019.
Africa Check, a fact-checking organization, has debunked multiple claims related to this rumor.
This includes a false assertion that Buhari’s wife, Aisha, supposedly stated she left the presidential villa (Aso Rock, the president’s official residence in Abuja) because “the man in Aso Rock is not my husband.”
See other fact-checks debunking claims about Buhari dying in 2017 here, here and here.
Claims circulating on Facebook in July 2025, asserting that former President Muhammadu Buhari died and was buried in 2017, are false and lack any new evidence.
Buhari’s body was returned to Nigeria from London on July 15, 2025, and subsequently buried in his hometown of Daura, Katsina state, in northwestern Nigeria.
The claim that he died and was buried in 2017 is false.
The same claim was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Credit: Africa Check
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