The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, has described as “false story,” reports that he “reached a deal with his Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential aspirant he allegedly met in his current foreign trips.

A press release from the media office of the Obi-Datti campaign for 2023 Presidential Election, responding to the reports on Saturday, addressed what it described as “uncharitable propagandists who indulge in distorting facts in the pursuit of imaginary relevance for their paymasters.”

A release from Obi-Datti Media office, made available to NewsOrient, said: “Rather than strive to contend with the hard sell of their candidates, these mischief makers bandy misleading accounts of the issue-based messages of our candidate just to score cheap political points and thus distract the discerning public.

“While we understand the frustration of dealing in their hard-to-sell, “expired milk” [apologies to BAT] in a competitive market, the fairplay rule demands that you don’t associate the good with the bad product. We demand honour.

“We know the intention of the spin-doctors in selling an utterly false story that the highflying Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, met with his PDP counterpart and reached a deal.  Nothing can be further from the truth!

“Obi’s foreign trip, its motive, and where and who to meet are already in the public domain; his meeting in the UK with some Nigerian political leaders is visually seen by all. But mischievous propagandists prefer to concoct lies in a desperate effort to clean up their candidate.

“We understand why the focus is on the Obi-Datti candidacy; they are easily the front runners in this 2023 race and the tag team has irresistible messages that are resonating with the embattled Nigerian public who are anxious more than ever to reclaim and take back their country.

The LP candidates are on a divine mission to rescue and rebuild this country and cannot be distracted by any fabrications intended to mislead. Obi’s mission is to rescue Nigeria from the old order.

“The laughable contradictory story exposes the writers as having exhausted themselves even before the start of the electioneering campaign and now resort to manufacturing supporters. The same people who said that Obi is a social media phantom wave without political structure to win an election are today struggling to ‘photoshop’ the same Obi with their candidate.

“Obi’s respect for Atiku or any leader in this country has more to do with his sound upbringing and the fact that his style of politics is devoid of hate and bitterness and should not be misconstrued to be cavorting the spent order represented by the competition.

“These propagandists need to know that the movement Obi and Datti-Ahmed are driving is not something in control of one man negotiating it away.

“Nigerian people have taken the steering from Obi and are driving him to the Aso Rock Villa; they will not look sideways for distractions.

“Obi-Datti media office is privy to intelligence that many distorted stories will be dished to the public to create confusion in the minds of the public and notes that such a mission is dead on arrival because the people’s commitment to the Obidient assignment is total,” the press statement said.