Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State on Monday recounted how the presidential candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi allegedly ordered security operatives to detain him during his time as the governor of Anambra State.
El-Rufai who spoke during a dialogue meeting for presidential candidates organised by the Arewa joint committee, said he visited Anambra in 2013 to monitor the governorship election as an official of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
However, El-Rufai claimed he was not allowed to do so as Obi who was the then governor of the state ordered the Department of State Service (DSS) operatives to detain him at a hotel he lodged in Awka, the state capital.
El-Rufai said as an official of the APC at the time, he had gone to Anambra to monitor the governorship election in the state.
Obi was seeking a second term in office on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) at the time.
He said, “In 2013, I went to Anambra State as an official of the APC to witness the bye-election for governorship. Your next guest, Peter Obi, as governor, got me arrested and detained for 48 hours in my hotel room.
“Now I’m the Governor of Kaduna State and he’s coming to Kaduna. In addition to the police and the State Secret Service, I have one Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army here, if I need to arrest and detain anyone. But we are northerners, we are civilised. We don’t do things like that. I wish you all safe journey back to your destinations.”
It would be recalled that shortly after the incident, El-Rufai dragged the SSS to court, and in September 2014, a federal high court in Awka had ordered the security agency to apologise to him.
The court also awarded him N2 million in damages for unlawful detention.
