Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, is alive.
On Monday, an account supposedly belonging to Abdulrazak
Gurnar, winner of the 2021 Nobel prize for literature, said Soyinka is dead.
“I got a call from Nigeria. Wole Soyinka died suddenly a few
minutes ago. A terrible news,” the post read.
The first red flag was the use of a countable noun article
for “news” — “a… news”.
Grammatically, “news” is uncountable and a Nobel laureate
would know that.
The post garnered over 150 retweets and 250 likes in a short
while.
TheCable after contacting
his family, Ilemakin, his son, laughed it off.
“The rumour has been
going round since last week. Soyinka is alive when last I checked,” he said.
The account which made the post was created in August 2021
and already has 14,000 followers.
In announcing Gurnah’s Nobel prize win on Friday, BBC had
tagged the fake account, but Lola Shoneyin, Nigerian author, quoted the tweet,
pointing out that Gurnah is not Twitter user.
“During my short exchange with Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah a few
minutes ago, he stated, I am not a Twitter user. Please take note,” the post
reads.
The post about Soyinka’s “death” attracted numerous comments
from users, some expressing their condolences but many contended that the news
is fake and the account does not belong to Gurnah.
All posts on the page have been deleted.
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