The police in Abuja on Wednesday arrested a vocal promoter of the Labour Party as part of a defamation suit that has simmered since late February, Peoples Gazette was told.
Nnamdi Chude, known across the microblogging website Twitter for his staunch pro-Labour advocacy, was taken into custody after honouring a police invitation in an alleged defamation claim brought by controversial businessman Emeka Offor.
Mr Chude, The Gazette learnt from sources familiar with the development, was detained around 12:00 p.m. after reporting at the police headquarters in Abuja. He was told that Mr Offor had decided to sue for defamation and he would be kept in custody for trial.
Francis Obuzor, an Abuja-based attorney representing Mr Chude on the matter, said the police have prepared charges — and his client may be arraigned on Thursday morning before a magistrate in the nation’s capital.
While The Gazette confirmed that Mr Chude was being held at a facility used by the Interpol in Nigeria, the body denied involvement in the arrest.
“He is not in our custody, this matter could be with the cybercrime unit but not our department at Interpol,” said Garba Umar, an assistant inspector-general of police, on Wednesday afternoon. “We have nothing to do with the case.”
Today’s detention came weeks exactly one month after Mr Chude was arrested in Anambra and transported to Abuja by officers attached to the police cybercrime unit. The police later said the matter was linked to a tweet by Mr Chude that allegedly cast Mr Offor in an odious light.
The tweet said Mr Offor was plotting with Bola Tinubu to compel Peter Obi to accept the disputed presidential election of February 25. Mr Offor strongly denied the allegation, but Mr Chude was released from custody after being made to record a video retracting and apologising for the offensive tweet.
Following Mr Chude’s apology and release from custody on March 24, there were indications that the matter would no longer be pursued by Mr Offor. It remained unclear why the billionaire oil trader decided to file fresh charges, which the police are moving to prosecute under criminal defamation statutes.
Mr Offor declined to comment on his lawsuit and police’s intervention when reached by The Gazette on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr Offor has been in the news for very negative reasons and obidients suggest that he may have been involved in some trade offs to secure his shaking financial foundation.
In 2017 Premium times reported him being broke
“
The fall of the Peoples Democratic Party at the centre appears to have devastated the fortunes of several politically-connected businessmen who, as once suggested by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, mostly relied on the then-ruling party for government contracts.
One of such billionaire businessmen, Emeka Offor, has indicated that he is broke, just over two years after the PDP left power.
In the build-up to the 2003 general elections, Mr. Offor was reported to have donated N200 million to the Obasanjo/Atiku presidential re-election campaign. During the heat of the Obasanjo-Atiku feud in 2006, the Atiku Media Office in a statement by Garba Shehu, now President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesperson, said a special account to finance the PDP presidential re-election bid in 2003 was managed by Mr. Offor.”
Sahara reporters also carried this piece in 2013
The security situation in the sleepy town of Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State is tense and may explode anytime.
The security situation in the sleepy town of Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State is tense and may explode anytime.
This is because the majority of the people are preparing for a showdown with the town’s controversial billionaire, Wilson Orakwue Emeka Offor, better known as Emeka Offor.”
In September 2022 Sahara reporters
“
SaharaReporters reliably gathered that Ofor while taking out his anger on the young man framed Udu by claiming that he stole a car and thereafter invited the Inspector-General of Police Monitoring team from Abuja to arrest him in Lagos and take him to the Federal Capital Territory.
ANigerian businessman, Emeka Ofor, has ordered the arrest of his son-in-law, Dr Ugochukwu Udu, 38, for allegedly refusing to apologise to him after an argument.
SaharaReporters reliably gathered that Ofor while taking out his anger on the young man framed Udu by claiming that he stole a car and thereafter invited the Inspector-General of Police Monitoring team from Abuja to arrest him in Lagos and take him to the Federal Capital Territory.”
The Nation Newspapers 2017
“A law firm, Falana & Falana’s Chambers, has asked chairman of Chrome Group, Sir Emeka Offor, to pay his workers who are owed over N1.1billion.
In an August 16 letter on behalf of staff of Chrome Group, the firm demanded the immediate payment of all their outstanding salaries.
It also asked for the remittance of all statutory deductions from their salaries since July 2015.
The law firm said its clients comprise “all the staff of Chrome Group and others associated with it nationwide” whose salaries and emoluments have not been paid by Offor.
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