The Obi-Datti Media Office has clarified the facts on the circumstances behind the closure of Next International (UK) Ltd, one of Peter Obi’s businesses and a candidate for the Labour Party presidency.
According to trendynews, officials in the United Kingdom have suspended the company that is largely owned by Obi for failing to file its annual accounts.
According to reports, the corporation was struck off the records in September 2021 as a result of first and second gazette notices of a “compulsory” strike.
In the UK, failure to submit annual accounts or neglect to inform Companies House of a change in the official registered office address results in a company being forced to be struck off by creditors or the Companies House.
Once a company is struck off, its details will be removed from the Companies House register and the company ceases to exist.
But in a statement issued on Thursday, the Head of Obi-Datti Media Office, Diran Onifade, dismissed speculations that the company was liquidated by UK authorities.
Onifade explained that the owners voluntarily liquidated the firm as it was no longer in operation.
He said “Agents of the political opposition unsettled by the high rising profile of the Labour Party flag bearer” were only trying to make “political capital” out of the development.
He also berated those twisting the resting of Next International (UK) Ltd., saying, “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.”
The statement read, “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.”
