₦airaland Forum

Political Body doubles are actually surprisingly rare. Granted, if they’re really good, we’d never know about them, since that’s kind of the point, but documented examples are hard to come by. Still, here are three examples of “authentic” fake world leaders.

1. General Bernard Montgomery

The name might not ring a bell, but Montgomery was the British World War II general responsible for planning the D-Day invasion of Normandy. So, you know, kind of a big deal.
In the lead-up to the historic invasion, MI5 noticed that another soldier, an Australian actor named M.E. Clifton James, was a dead-ringer for the general. James was tasked with a special mission: Pretend to be General Montgomery and travel around Gibraltar and Northern Africa while loudly talking about fake Allied plans within earshot of Nazi spies.

James, who was missing a finger from the first World War and wore a prosthetic to better pass as Montgomery, pulled it off. In his autobiography, I Was Monty’s Double James claimed that the Nazis had been so thoroughly duped that they considered assassinating him.

The Germans ended up moving a lot of their troops to southern France, where, thanks in part to James’ actions, they thought the invasion would come from instead of Normandy.

2. Saddam Hussein (and maybe his son, Uday Hussein)

Saddam Hussein is said to have used lots of body doubles.
The late Iraqi dictator reportedly employed a roster of body doubles while ruling the Middle Eastern country, according to U.S. Millitary officials.

According to an expert, especially observant Iraqis could tell if they were dealing with the real Hussein by whether or not his bodyguard would ever joke around.

Talk of Hussein’s use of body doubles was so prolific, that when he was captured in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to address concerns that the U.S. had nabbed a decoy.

“Knowing that his doubles had used plastic surgery and could very well have done duplicate tattoos and bullet holes and various things [like] moles that would make it appear they were Saddam Hussein, the decision was made to have him publicly identified,” Rumsfeld explained in a Pentagon briefing.
Hussein’s oldest son, Uday Hussein, may have used a body double as well. According to the supposed double, Latif Yahia, he went to school with Uday, and in 1988 when he was serving his mandatory stint in the Iraqi military, was enlisted to be Uday’s body double against his wishes.

Yahia claimed that he had been shot 26 times while pretending to be Uday, who he said was a psychopath. He eventually escaped Iraq, and there was even a Hollywood movie about his story, The Devil’s Double.
Some journalists have cast serious doubts on some or all of Yahia’s story, but it made for a pretty good movie.
Joseph Stalin

3. Felix Dadaev and Joseph Stalin.

The leader of the U.S.S.R. was infamous for his mastery of propaganda, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he employed body doubles. One double, known only as “Rashid,” was reportedly dismissed from the army because of his resemblance to Stalin. After he went home, a KGB agent came to recruit “Rashid,” and he would go on to sit-in for the dictator at meetings and banquets. He died in 1991 at age 93.
A little more is known about another of Stalin’s supposed doubles, Felix Dadaev.

As Dadaev tells it, he was injured during the Russian liberation of Grozny in 1942 and Soviet superiors faked his death. He was told that he needed to pass as Stalin — who at the time was nearly 40 years his senior. Had he not impressed the chief of the secret police or Stalin’s personal head of security, Dadaev says he probably would’ve been shot.

His biggest outing as “Stalin” was during the dictator’s trip to the 1945 Yalta conference. Stalin’s flight was a secret, but one with Dadaev was made public.
Dadaev kept his role as a body double a secret until he was 88, only spilling the beans in 2008 (with the blessing of Vladimir Putin, naturally).

There may be many more… or not

Joe R. Reeder, a former undersecretary for the U.S. Army, told Fox News in 2001 that many other world leaders had used body doubles to escape capture. According to Reeder, Osama bin Laden probably used body doubles, as did Manuel Noriega, Haitian general Raoul Cedras, and Fidel Castro. There are also crazy rumors that Hitler used a body double to escape death. Many of these rumors are based on hearsay and speculation.
It’s really hard to separate the truth from hogwash when dealing with a conspiracy of this magnitude, and even then, some of the truth smells fishy.

mayor2013:
Run a scan on your ride. Yours is obd2 compliant. Fixing cars these days have gone beyond the scope of performing magic/ or guessing

chijiblaze:
This photo is "FAKE NEWS!" for the following reasons:-
1. The people in the picture cannot be identified. You can't see their faces. There's one person who dressed up with a shawl over his neck, in the fashion style of the Imo state governor: Roaches Okorocha, another one wears round rim eyeglasses, similar to that of the Kaduna state governor, Mallam El Rufai, but since we can't see their faces, how can we tell?
2. How many governors on the platform of the ruling APC party, are there in Nigeria?
And how many of them made the alleged trip to London to allegedly meet with the ailing president?
Now how many of them are identifiable (including their lookalikes) from the picture?
Even the prominent ones e.g. the governor of Lagos state Akin. Ambode is obviously not there. News has it that he was (still is) busy battling flooding menace all over his domain and issuing quit notices to violators of the building codes.
3. Who are the other people in the picture, whose faces are neither visible nor they unidentifiable? Who is that man, standing beside the alleged president, dressed casually by flying out his shirt? Were the governors accompanied by pressmen? If so, who are these pressmen?
4. Who took the picture, and why did s/he take just one single shot?
5. I can see on the dining table, bottles of 5Alive pulp, and bottled water, not the kind sold in London supermarkets.
6. Isn't it amazing that the president's wife and better half has been barred from seeing her husband by "the powers that be" a.k.a. "CABAL" that prompted her complaints against the Jackals and Hyenas getting their due punishment on return of the Lion king? Same goes for the editor of The popular Guardian newspaper, who was locked out of the Nigeria house in London, but the door is surprisingly wide open to political associates and party leaders. Why is that so?
7. Why wasn't the alleged visit publicized prior to the journey?
8. If the president is is as healthy as depicted in the photo what stops him from video-addressing the Nation?
FAKE NEWS STORIES!!!

fasterwell:
I am not forcing anyone to believe the revelation and you are not God to decide whether Buhari's mission is over or not

fasterwell:
You opinion doesn't matter to me because even God Himself said He created and raised Pharoh so He can be glorified.

President Buhari is on a mission ordained by God for His own glory and until that mission is fulfilled, Buhari will remain the President.

HungerBAD:
Death everywhere in Rivers.

Rivers State is the official death capital of Nigeria. The Governor is from Obio/Akpor LGA of Rivers State where this chief was murdered.

Ironically,the same Obio/Akpor LGA is the most violent LGA in Nigeria.

Governor Wike how far?as the chief security officer of your state,what is going on?atleast pretend that you are even trying to stop the killings,instead of chilling and counting scores as per WE against THEM.

A different thread just showcased the ongoing developments in Owerri,but instead of Rivers to showcase anything positive,it is only stories of deaths every week.

Governor Wike you are a failure as regards safeguarding your citizenry.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has defended his decision shunning entreaties to make his assets public while in office between 2011 and 2015.

Former President Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan at the State House in Abuja The former president, whose action is captured in the new book, ‘Against the Run of Play: How an incumbent president was defeated’ by Segun Adeniyi, argued that he did not believe that declaring his assets publicly could stem the tide of corruption or degrade the level of terrorism in the country.

Jonathan said: “It is not the President declaring his assets that will end Boko Haram and whether I am criticised from head to toe I will not declare my assets publicly; it is not right; I did not even want to declare my assets as VP but was forced by the then President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. “The law is clear. A public officer should declare his asset, and if there are issues, then the relevant agencies would have a basis to assess whether you have amassed wealth or not. Pressed further to make public his assets in the spirit of the anti-corruption war and moral basis, the book quotes Jonathan as saying, “I don’t give a damn about it. The law is clear about it and so, making it public is not issue and I will not play into the hands of people. I have nothing to hide. “I declared under Yar Ádua because he did it, but it is not proper; it is not the president declaring assets that will change the country,” he insisted.

The book noted, “By refusing to make public his assets declaration, Jonathan easily played into the hands of the opposition that had started to define him as a corrupt leader. “That characterisation hounded him throughout his tenure and would become a major campaign point in 2015. “But if there was any corruption scandal that did incalculable damage to the credibility of his government, it was the mismanagement of the fuel subsidy funds,” the book noted. It went further: “And with that, critical stakeholders, including organised labour unions and civil society groups-responded with anger and condemnation, vowing to challenge the Federal Government by calling for a nationwide strike.”