Nigerian presidential candidate Peter Obi was detained at Heathrow Airport in London on Good Friday and interrogated for hours, apparently because someone had been impersonating him in London.
On Thursday, Obi denied reports that the British government apologized to him for the incident.
Obi, 61, made a surprisingly strong showing in the polls ahead of Nigeria’s February 25 presidential election, running as a reform candidate under the banner of the tiny Labor Party and drawing enthusiastic support from urban young people. When the votes were tallied, however, Obi finished third behind ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu and Islamist challenger Atiku Abubakar. Obi and Abubakar have both challenged the election results.
Obi, a successful businessman, owns a house in London (several of them, in fact, which became a political problem when he ran for vice president on the ticket of Abubakar’s party in 2019).
According to Obi spokesman Diran Onifade, Obi “joined the queue for the necessary airport protocols when he was accosted by immigration officials, who handed him a detention note and told him to step aside.”
Onifade said Obi spent the Easter holidays in detention and then returned to Nigeria. He expressed concern that the “impersonator,” who is still at large, could perform criminal acts that would frame Obi “in a manner that could be a huge embarrassment to him, his family, his party, the Obedient movement, and Nigeria, where he currently and remains the conscience of the people.”
“Obedient” is the nickname Obi followers have embraced for themselves.
Onifade said Obi has been under constant attack since the presidential election, which “his supporters and many other election watchers including international observers believed very strongly that he won.”
Onifade accused the Nigerian government of bugging Obi’s phone and making trouble for him overseas, implying that Obi’s trouble at Heathrow and the alleged “impersonator” could be part of that campaign of harassment.
On Thursday, Onifade denied a rumor that Obi received an apology from the British government.
“We would like to state emphatically that we are not aware of any such apology, and have not issued any statement whatsoever, in that regard. While we continue to examine any dubious or political motive on the part of the perpetrators of the identity theft, we have every confidence in the ability of the British authorities to resolve the matter,” Onifade stated on Thursday.
The rumor apparently originated with Daniel Bwala, a spokesman for Abubakar’s presidential campaign.
British government apologized to Peter Obi for illegally serving him a detention note. Can you now put a “respek” on his name? We are now waiting for US government to apologize to Tinubu for illegally collecting the forfeited dollars. Asiwaju fans oya start throwing the insults
— D. H Bwala (@BwalaDaniel) April 13, 2023
“[The] British government apologized to Peter Obi for illegally serving him a detention note. Can you now put a ‘respek’ on his name? We are now waiting for [the] U.S. government to apologize to Tinubu for illegally collecting the forfeited dollars. Asiwaju fans oya start throwing the insults,” Bwala wrote on Twitter.
“Respek” is a slang term for forcefully or violently demanding respect. “Asiwaju fans oya” means “say goodbye to the fans” in Igbo, a Nigerian dialect.
Bwala’s comment about the U.S. government “illegally collecting forfeited dollars” from Bola Tunubu was a reference to $460,000 the U.S. seized from the nominal Nigerian president-elect in 1994 after a Chicago court charged him with profiting from heroin trafficking. The court documents were exposed by a website called Uberfacts, and their validity was confirmed by Tinubu’s APC party this week.
APC noted that Tinubu did not admit any complicity with drug trafficking when the money was seized from ten accounts that were opened in his name, and argued the 29-year-old case should not be used to challenge his legitimacy for the presidency.
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