I never said Peter Odili and I were classmates — Obi

On the controversy generated by his comments, Obi said, “I couldn’t have said that former Governor Odili was my classmate.”

By Jeffrey Agbo

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has clarified his statement in Port Harcourt misunderstood to mean that he and former Rivers State governor Peter Odili were classmates.

Obi was in Rivers State on Thursday to commission the Nkpolu-Oroworokwo flyover on the invitation of Governor Nyesom Wike.

Obi had said, “Dr. Peter Odili was my Senior Boy in Secondary School. We couldn’t have played football in CKC without Odili. Any day he is not in the match we’ve lost, so we know. I have people in Rivers state that went to school with me, some people nobody have seen people who went to school with them. So we must say this.”

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Speaking with the Obi-Datti Media Office on the controversy generated by his comments, Obi said, “I couldn’t have said that former Governor Odili was my classmate, I said that he was a great footballer in my school that we all cherished and had good memory of his football exploits when we entered the school.

“I was in CKC from 1973 to 1978 and Dr Peter Odili left before I entered the school. He was such a fabulous footballer whose image still loomed large even in our time especially when my primary school was very close to CKC.

“The truth is that the primary school I attended Santa Maria school/Holy Trinity School were both owned by the same Catholic Church that owns the Christ the King, CKC, Onitsha. In fact both primary schools were feeder schools to the CKC and large number of pupils that passed through them ended up in CKC for secondary education.”