Nigeria’s popular opposition leader Peter Obi and a presidential candidate for upcoming elections, was on Tuesday blocked from visiting a village in a volatile region where dozens were killed last year, he said as the election campaign heats up.

Africa’s most populous country goes to the polls on January 16 and Obi, of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, is one of the leading candidates squaring up against incumbent President Bola Tinubu.

Nigerian elections are usually tainted with violence. Politicians recruit thugs to intimidate opponents and cause chaos during rallies and at election booths to have an edge over opponents.

Police in the central state of Benue confirmed to local media that Obi’s convoy was “blocked by some youths” and said they had launched an investigation.

More than 150 people were killed last year in Benue in the mostly Christian village of Yelwata in a region known as the Middle Belt, where attacks are often motivated by religious or ethnic differences.

Obi said in a post on X that his “convoy was prevented from proceeding to the community by thugs chanting, ‘Peter Obi, go back'”.

“It was deeply distressing to witness such hostility,” he wrote saying his visit was to show support and “to listen to families who have lost loved ones, and to offer comfort”.

His office claimed in a statement that the group that obstructed him was “armed with dangerous weapons”.

“This is a campaign period. As presidential candidate I’m free to move around,” Obi said.

Obi later told AFP in an interview in the capital, Abuja, that the attack on his convoy did not bode well for “free, fair and credible” polls.

“People don’t come out when there’s rascality and bad behaviour,” he said, pointing out that the obstruction of his entourage on the road earlier Tuesday was an example.

Asked if he thought the blockade was politically orchestrated rather than being part of the wider, sporadic violence that erupts across the state, he said: “What (else) would it have been?

“People were shouting, ‘Peter Obi go back, Peter Obi go back’… Telling me to ‘go back’ is politics.”