Obi-Datti Media office has been made aware of a fictitious and scurrilous write-up titled, ‘Peter Obi and NADECO/Democracy Day’ and to say that there is no iota of truth whatsoever in the narratives contained therein. Obi was never directly or indirectly involved in the activities of the June 12 struggle.
While he supported and voted for the late Chief MKO Abiola in 1993, soon after the election he relocated to the United Kingdom with his family where he ran a decent successful business that received encouragement and support from credible finance institutions all over the World because of the integrity and reputation he put in it.
As of 1993, Obi was not a politician but he came to admire and vote for Abiola through late former Senate President Dr. Chuba Okadigbo whom he was his fan and admirer.
Even while at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Obi was not into politics as he was more associated as a student entrepreneur.
The reputation Obi took in the business that stood him out was what he, later on, took into politics. Before becoming Governor he never worked or held any government position. He never worked in Nigeria Ports Authority.
The closest he came too late General Sani Abacha’s government was when his petition on port inefficiency and congestion made his colleagues in businesses draft into the special committee on port reform that lasted for just three months.
Whatever status Obi is enjoying today within and outside the country is due to the high integrity he brought into what he does whether in business or politics.
After eight years of outstanding governance to the people of Anambra state, where he created a sustainable environment for development by providing basic infrastructure to the people, access to rural agrarian communities, clearing inherited pension and salary arrears of over a 32billion, leaving office not owing any salary, pension, or contractors, and leaving office with huge investments, plus a savings of over $150m and 35millions of naira in various Nigerian banks, Obi stood out as good governance model using Human Development Index, HDI, and was outstanding in millennium Development Goals that attracted International agencies. His good governance delivery plus transparency in the deployment of public funds earned him the Governor of the Decade recognition as assessed by editors in the country.
Since leaving office nearly 10 years ago, Obi continues to say that Anambra state has not bought him a bottle of water because he is not into the after-office largesse that most of his colleagues covet for themselves. This is because he refused to sign into law anything aimed at benefitting him personally.
Before becoming a state Governor, Obi had emerged as the youngest Nigerian to chair a post-consolidation bank and served in various other firms as director where he was nominated based on his management and fiscal prudence reputation.
This is the man some hirelings are making fruitless efforts to dent his image by fabricating lies against him including saying that he was against June 12 when he was not even resident in Nigeria during the June 12 imbroglio but living in the United Kingdom and could not have been involved as the faceless writer dubiously wanted the gullible public to believe.
Such brazen sunken story ordinarily should not deserve our response but for the credulous public that May not be privy to these facts. And, because of the level of distortions of facts in the write-up, the mischievous story has no byline.
Obi-Datti Media office is well aware of the renewed activities of some well-mobilized mercenaries given the arduous task of de-marketing the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
The motive which is well known to us is to dent his profile and diminish his rising profile, which stands him out as one of the most outstanding Nigerian democrats today whose belief in the rule of law and non-violence policy remains remarkable.
The writer, unable to appreciate the outstanding principles in Obi, tries to equate him with his Principal, who only joined the NADECO struggle as an afterthought and only after fruitless and failed lobby to serve in Gen. Sani Abacha’s government. Since the former Chief Security Officer CSO to the late military Head of state revealed this fact, nobody within his orbit ever tried denying it to avoid unearthing further concrete details.
Unlike their sponsors, Peter Obi is riding high on his uncommon principles, which remain verifiable. The Obi-Datti Media office will therefore like to urge members of the reading public to treat this recent drivel as a malicious effigy of the author’s warped and clever-by-half imagination that should be consigned to the trash where it rightly belongs.
Diran Onifade
Head, Obi-Datti Media