Town Hall reporter KEN LEE solves the mystery of the vanishing Tory councillor
Rare appearance: Oni Oviri in the Town Hall chamber
Oni Oviri, the absentee Tory councillor for Purley who is somehow managing to contest a parliamentary seat in tomorrow’s General Election, claims that the reason she has been such a stranger at Croydon Town Hall is because someone tried to poison her.
Oviri, who has been absent from 77per cent of the Croydon council meetings she has been expected to attend this year, is standing as the Conservative Party candidate in South Shields – a seat which has never elected a Tory in nearly 200 years.
Oviri told the local newspaper in the north-east that the suspected poisoning did not occur while serving the residents of her Purley ward in south London, for which she receives nearly £12,000 per year in council-funded allowances. It occurred, she believes, while she was in Nigeria campaigning in the presidential election in February.
The incident left her unable to walk, and she is still unable to bend her toes. She told The Shields Gazette that she does not know whether she has suffered permanent nerve damage.
Oviri, 37, risked losing her council seat if she did not attend any full council meetings for six months, and after being absent since January, in July she had to be carried into the Town Hall chamber to be able to be recorded as present, and so avoid being the cause of a potentially tricky by-election for Tim Pollard’s Conservative group.
There is little hard evidence provided to back up the assertions made by Oviri in her interview with the local newspaper to promote her election campaign.
“I strongly suspect that I was deliberately poisoned,” she told The Shields Gazette.
“The doctors have refused to say so so far because they are still carrying out tests.
“But there were high levels of mercury in my blood system. You cannot ingest that much mercury by eating it in food. So the conclusion must be that I was poisoned.” The caveat here is that that is her own conclusion, and not necessarily that of the Nigerian police nor her medical advisers.
South Shields, or as Oni Oviri would have it, ‘Britain’s Dubai’
Asked why she thinks she was targeted during a restaurant visit, the best Oviri could offer was, “I have absolutely no idea.”
Oviri spent more than three weeks in a Nigerian hospital before continuing her recovery in hospital in London hospital and then at home.
Oviri’s claims to represent South Shields appear a little flimsy. Apparently, she has some friends from the north-east. But she told the newspaper that, if elected (which ain’t gonna happen), she would make South Shields “Britain’s Dubai” by seeking free port status for the Port of Tyne post-Brexit, “while also developing the town’s tourist potential”.
The news reporter failed to state whether they required hospital treatment after conducting the interview, to put stitches in after their sides had split from laughing.
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So she saved this explanation for several months until obviously it became too much of a liability when canvassing as an MP. If she would have explained this to her constituents in Purley it may have elicited some sympathy rather than appearing for the desperate act of cynicism it is now.
The lamentable face of local politics in Great Britain in 2019: Oni Oviri and Paul Scott. About everything but serving the community who elected you.
Perhaps if we were to pay our councillors more in allowances, they might be able to afford private security whilst on trips abroad?
Just a thought.
Many Japanese people were killed and have been disabled by mercury poisioning from eating contaminated fish.
Google “Minimata disease” and “mercury poisoning”.