By Tai Emeka Obasi
If you had some knowledge about espionage and counter espionage, the type the American CIA, British MI6, French DGSE, Italian AISE, the Israeli MOSSAD, the Russian FSB, the Chinese MSS, etc… including our own DSS, get involved in on regular basis, you would fully appreciate what happened at Heathrow Airport in London when HE Peter Obi’s traveling passport was passed through routine procedure and the computer detected an identity duplication.
Nobody would duplicate an identity of a man as popular as the Labour Party presidential candidate just to buy ice cream. In the times we are, it must have been for something sinister, much more than defrauding him. Everywhere in the world, innocent people go to prison, others sentenced for life and many capitally executed for crimes they never committed.
But in developed world, such heinous practices of setting people up by pinning crimes they didn’t commit on them hardly sell when there is a character clash.
Before I continue, PO once told me how his American Express card was robbed off him years back in Lagos. And in a matter of hours substantial sums in dollars were leaving his foreign account. The American Express card company did not believe him when he contacted them to scream that someone was spending his money on his behalf. He explained how his card was robbed off him but they still doubted him. But when he insisted, they decided to make a detailed check of his lifestyle.
He never bought very big cars, checked into big hotels, never bought expensive wines, never bought designers’ watches, shoes and wears but suddenly, within days, the thief had broken all those distinct but unique lifestyle on his behalf.
They then employed investigators to track the thief, which was successfully done and PO’s money, to the last cent, replaced. That is what being religiously consistent does for an exceptional character like PO.
So, what will whoever cloned his passport to duplicate him eventually achieve? Stuff drugs into his traveling bag or swap one already checked in on his behalf? Pin a murder or assassination on him?
What would one who has lived without any known social vice all through his adult life be easily set up with? What kind of woman would they ever use to seduce a man who is not known with extramarital amorous activities? What drink would you ever use to make him tipsy apart from water or coffee? What kind of food can you use to ensnare a man who can live 72 hours at a stretch on just light fruits mostly purchased by himself? What hour of the day can you catch a man, who is ever alert 24/7 no matter how deeply he slept, off guard?
And finally, what manner of crime can you pin on a man, who has God’s favour always following him about?
In a positive sense, Peter Gregory Obi is like The Man They Couldn’t Arrest in that 1931 British crime movie directed by T. Hayes Hunter. Unlike the daredevil criminal in the movie in reference, PO’s only crime is submitting a petition to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, challenging the declaration of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as ‘president-elect’. They tried Deep Fake audio to label him a religious bigot, tried all ways to pin treason on him to the extent of involving a once-revered professor…none making any head way.
The APC and their acolytes should set aside this drug-style mafioso witch-hunt and meet him in court. He didn’t contest for the presidency to chicken out simply because some trigger-happy amatures are shooting from the hips. You can clone his passport and double his identity but he is a man who has an exceedingly defined characteristics that nothing can stick when investigations are carried out. When I say one more time that this man came far ahead of his generation better believe me.