Buhari presents Nigeria’s statement at TICAD7

• IPOB petitions Japanese emperor on visit
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday departed Nigeria for Japan to participate in the Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7) holding in the City of Yokohama from August 28 to August 30.

Femi Adesina, a presidential media aide revealed that Buhari would deliver Nigeria’s statement during Plenary Session in which he will appraise Nigeria-Japan relations and takeaways from TICAD6.He said the president would attend a state banquet and also honour the invitation of Emperor Naruhito to a Tea Reception at the Imperial Palace, Tokyo.

“In addition to a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Abe, the Nigerian president will also attend some side-events and meet chief executive officers of some Japanese companies with huge investments in Nigeria.”Formed in 1993, the now triennial TICAD, which has been convened alternately in Japan and Africa since TICAD6, according to the organisers, is the largest international conference held in Japan, which “provides an open forum that generates innovative discussion among various stakeholders on African development.”

Participants are drawn not only from African countries, but also international organisations, private companies and civil society organisations involved in development. Buhari’s participation will be his second, having attended TICAD6 in Nairobi, Kenya, in August 2016.

Meanwhile, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has written to Emperor Hironomiya Naruhito, asking him to abort the visit by President Muhammadu Buhari on grounds of doubtful identity.

In the letter he personally signed and made available to The Guardian, the IPOB leader pleaded with the emperor to use the authority of his high office “to cancel the visit by an impostor.”

IPOB, according to Kanu, represents the “marginalised indigenous peoples of eastern Nigeria, stressing, “the man whom you will receive as Nigeria’s president is a contracted body double of the late president of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari, who died in King’s Cross Hospital, London, in January 2017 following surgery for brain tumour.

“The purpose of this appeal is for your imperial majesty to protect Japanese national pride and call on this impostor of President Buhari to eschew this grand deceit and call off the visit.

“These affirmed misgivings on the identity of the president is heating up the polity, causing nationwide oppressive insecurity, havoc, impending catastrophe and implosion, widespread destruction of lives and property.”Kanu disclosed that arrangements had been concluded to cover the deceit by substituting the body double through digitised plastic surgery in fear that the new civilian regime in Sudan would not tolerate such level of impropriety.