"It is the real me I assure you," President Muhammadu Buhari said Sunday to a group of Nigerians during a visit to Poland, where he is attending the United Nations Climate Conference.
"A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill health," Buhari said. "I am still going strong."
The 75-year-old, who was elected in 2015 and will run for his second term in February, has been in ill health throughout his presidency. But in the video of his remarks posted to Twitter by his personal assistant, he joked as he dismissed the rumors, to laughter and head-shaking applause by some government officials after a Nigerian posed a question about his identity.
The government has been tight-lipped about Buhari's health throughout his presidency.
Rumors of his death started in 2017, when Buhari spent seven weeks in London for medical treatment. They abated when he returned to Nigeria, but returned in full force last month, stoked by prominent opposition leaders and separatists.
Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the separatist group, Indigenous People of Biafra, said that a Sudanese lookalike, named Jubril, had taken Buhari's place as a body double. His claims were shared widely online, often accompanied by videos that appeared to portray a dead Buhari lying in a London hospital.
This is not the first time that Nigerians have speculated about a president's mortality. State secrecy around former President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's ill health fostered similar rumors before Yar'Adua died in office in 2010.
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