Labour Party’s presidential candidate Peter Obi on Thursday falsely claimed that he met former Rivers governor Peter Odili in high school. 

“Peter Odili was my senior at (CKC); we played football together. If Odili is not able to play, just know we have lost that day,” Mr Obi while taking an apparent swing at the credibility of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress at a rally in Port Harcourt. 

“Everyone knows where I was schooled and my schoolmates. Not some people that no one knows their schoolmates or the schools they attended,” Mr Obi said during a project commissioning event organised by Nyesom Wike. 

But Mr Obi appeared to have lied in his statement because publicly available records said Mr Odili, governor from 1999 to 2007, was born in 1948 and graduated from high school in 1967. 

While it was true that Mr Odili was a prolific football player in high school at Christ the King College, Onitsha, he graduated more than a decade before Mr Obi and barely six years after the Labour politician was born in 1961. 

Mr Obi’s biodata in chronological order could not be found online, but an old picture posted online years ago said Mr Obi was in class four in 1977, indicating he would be in class five in 1978 when he was also supposed to have graduated because Nigerian high school education terminated at class five at the time.

Two classmates of Mr Obi’s informed Peoples Gazette they entered the University of Nigeria Nsukka together in 1980. 

It remained unclear whether Mr Obi goofed or it was a deliberate attempt at misinforming the public. Neither Mr Obi nor a Labour spokesman answered a request seeking comments from The Gazette. 

The former Anambra governor has faced previous accusation of embellishing facts or exaggerating details of an event. He was also taken to task for providing inaccurate statistics during public appearances.