{"id":70104,"date":"2025-07-09T14:25:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T14:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=70104"},"modified":"2025-07-09T14:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T14:25:18","slug":"i-met-abacha-as-a-trader-not-a-politician-peter-obi-clarifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/07\/09\/i-met-abacha-as-a-trader-not-a-politician-peter-obi-clarifies\/","title":{"rendered":"I Met Abacha as a Trader, Not a Politician -Peter Obi Clarifies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Labour Party\u2019s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has refuted claims linking him to the regime of the late military ruler, General Sani Abacha.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to fresh accusations that he held a political appointment under Abacha, Obi took to his social media handles on Wednesday to clarify that his only engagement during that period was as a businessman, not a political actor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I stated during my weekend interview and have always maintained, I never met General Sani Abacha before that encounter,\u201d Obi wrote. \u201cMy involvement was strictly as a trader, advocating for economic efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Obi explained that the meeting with Abacha occurred in 1996 when he joined other importers and traders to address congestion at Apapa Port in Lagos. Their objective, he said, was to suggest solutions to a critical logistics crisis affecting the Nigerian economy.<\/p>\n<p>To support his claim, Obi shared a letter dated April 24, 1996, signed by then Finance Minister, Abu Gidado, appointing him and fellow trader Edwin Okeke as co-opted members of a Taskforce on Ports Decongestion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe letter confirms that our participation was based on economic concerns, not political ambitions,\u201d Obi said, adding that the narrative linking him to Abacha&#8217;s government is being pushed by mischief-makers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t expect this evidence to silence those with ulterior motives, but I\u2019m placing it in the public domain for posterity and in line with my commitment to transparency,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samuel Adeola Labour Party\u2019s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has refuted claims linking him to the regime of the late military ruler, General Sani Abacha. Responding to fresh accusations that he held a political appointment under Abacha, Obi took to his social media handles on Wednesday to clarify that his only engagement during that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":70105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-70104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70106,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70104\/revisions\/70106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}