LP campaign: Why Next International, Obi’s UK firm, was shut down

The Labour Party (LP) presidential campaign team has explained why Next International Ltd, a company owned by Peter Obi, the standard bearer of the party, was shut down.

The company was said to have been closed by the United Kingdom government over its failure to submit its annual accounts.

Reacting, Diran Onifade, head of the Obi-Datti media office, in a statement on Thursday, said the company was voluntarily liquidated by its owners and not by the UK authorities as it was no longer in operation.

“When our principal insists that you go and verify facts about him and the information he dishes out, he didn’t say go and falsify facts,” Onifade said.

“For the record, the entity was 99 per cent owned by Next Nigeria International Ltd and established as its buying office in the 90s and Peter Obi was its CEO.

“At the time Peter Obi became governor of Anambra State in 2006, his wife assumed management of the winding down of the company and about one year ago requested that the company be dissolved under the voluntary strike off of the entity on grounds of dissolution and being inoperational, which is normal in winding up an entity.

“Peter Obi has consistently maintained that he is no longer involved in any Next-related business. The LP candidate by his antecedents in Anambra state for eight years, in private ventures where he held sway his records among the pack in this race for the Presidency, puts him miles ahead in moral rating.”