Presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, was allegedly detained by UK immigration officials at Heathrow Airport on Friday last week, News About Nigeria has learnt.
According to Prof Chinyere Okunna, a famous Mass Communications scholar, and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Paul University Awka, who is a confidant of Obi, the candidate was detained for hours and interrogated by officials.
Obi, who lived in the UK for a long time, was shocked and expressed pain about his ordeal, which he claimed was meant to hound and chase him out of Nigeria.
Okunna revealed that Obi told her about the incident in private, and expressed concern about his safety.
The immigration officials reportedly claimed that someone was impersonating Obi in the country, and his identity had been duplicated.
This revelation raised alarm bells for people knowledgeable about such matters, as it could implicate Obi in dubious and criminal activities, and rope him into any number of offenses.
This incident comes on the heels of other forms of intimidation and emotional torture faced by Obi, including bugging his phone and those of his wife and children, keeping him under constant surveillance, and wrongly accusing him of negative things he knows absolutely nothing about.
In the face of seeming protest by some Nigerians, the immigration officials eventually released Obi.
Speaking about the incident, Okunna said, “As he was telling me his ‘Heathrow tale of woe’ at Nkpor today, I could see a man who was in severe pain and under unbearable stress, who many would expect to be at the point of despair.
But, as he confirmed, he is ready to suffer this pain and is as determined as ever to pursue the path which he has chosen to enable him to arrive at the destination which well-meaning people in Nigeria and far beyond are expecting him to arrive at.”
