No, Germany’s foreign minister did not write to President Buhari about the attack on Ekweremadu

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 23, 2019 at 16:54
2 min read
By AFP Nigeria, Mayowa TIJANI

Posts seen by thousands of Nigerians on Facebook and WhatsApp claim to show a letter from German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas lambasting President Muhammadu Buhari after an attack on Senator Ike Ekweremadu in the German city of Nuremberg by pro-Biafran activists. However, Germany’s foreign ministry told AFP that Maas has written no such letter.

Former senate deputy president Ekweremadu, who still represents Enugu state, was assaulted over the weekend by activists claiming to be from the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group as he attended a conference in southern Germany.

Men reportedly from the group, which seeks the secession of southeast Nigeria, were seen beating up the politician and tearing his clothes in numerous viral videos filmed at the scene. Ekweremadu returned to Nigeria less than 48 hours later.

In it the letter attributed to Maas, the German foreign minister supposedly dismisses a Nigerian government request to prosecute those responsible and instead demands the authorities in the West African nation go after those behind “atrocities” at home.

One such post, archived here and shared nearly 5,000 times, is captioned: “BREAKING: EKWEREMMADU'S ATTACK BY IPOB, GERMAN GOVERNMENT REPLIES, BLAST NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT.”

A screenshot of one of the Facebook posts carrying the false letter, taken on August 23, 2019

The text cites Maas as saying: “I find it extremely provocative and unusually undiplomatic when a government that has created the conditions that exiled its citizens demands the same people's prosecution by the host country for demanding justice and justice from its government officials.”

It continues: “The German Government will respond to your request to prosecute the demonstrators who have requested their representative to do his work in Nigeria as soon as you have your Fulani terrorists detained.”

Similar posts, in some cases accompanied by a German translation, have been shared by blogs, elsewhere on Facebook, and in multiple groups on WhatsApp in Nigeria. We’ve archived a couple of others here and here.

A screenshot of the false letter, as forwarded on WhatsApp

Germany’s foreign ministry dismisses the letter

Nigerian media have reported that officials from the country are pressing German authorities to prosecute those who carried out the alleged attack on Ekweremadu.

AFP reached out to the foreign ministry in Germany to ask if the supposed letter from Maas to Buhari was genuine, and we were told that it was not real.

"This letter does not come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor from Minister Maas,” the ministry in Berlin said.

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