Lai Mohammed said the just concluded 2023 election in Nigeria “is the fairest, most transparent and authentic in the history of Nigeria.”
By TheNiche
The Federal Government has accused the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, and his running mate, Yusuf Datti Ahmed, of alleged inciting people to violence over the outcome of the presidential elections.
The Federal Government also admonished the duo not to incite people to violence over the outcome of the 2023 election.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the allegation in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the minister is in Washington to engage with international media organisations and Think-tanks on the just concluded 2023 polls.
NAN also reports that the minister had so far engaged respectively with the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine.
During the respective interactions with the media organisations, the minister said it was wrong for Obi on one breadth to seek redress in court over the outcome of the polls and on another breadth incite people to violence.
“Obi and his Vice, Datti Ahmed, cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is sworn in on May 29, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria. This is treason. You cannot be inviting insurrection, and this is what they are doing.
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“Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not the democrat that he claimed to be.
“A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election,” he said.
The minister said in challenging the election results, there was no pathway to victory for either Obi or Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to the minister, neither Obi nor Atiku met the constitutional requirements to be declared as president.
“The constitution has stringent criteria for anybody who wants to be president of the country.
“Not only must he have the plurality of votes cast in an election, he must also have scored one-quarter of votes cast in at least 25 states.
“Only the President-elect met the criteria by scoring 8.79 million votes and having one-quarter of all the votes cast in 29 states of the federation,” he said.
The minister said Atiku who came second with 6.9 million votes was only able to make one-quarter of the votes cast in 21 states.
He said Obi came third with 5.8 million votes but won only one-quarter of votes cast in 15 states.
“You cannot win an election in a poll where you came a distant third position and failed to meet constitutional requirements.
“Peter Obi, while complaining of fraud has not disowned his victory in Lagos,” he said.
Elaborating on his mission to the U.S., the minister said he was there to correct the negative narratives being promoted by naysayers and opposition on the 2023 election.
He said the opposition, having lost in the election were alleging fraud, calling for its cancellation and constitution of interim government.
“We have come here to balance that skewed narrative and to tell the world unambiguously that the just concluded general elections in Nigeria is the fairest, most transparent and authentic in the history of Nigeria.
“The election is the most fair and credible because of the introduction of Bimodal Voters Verification System (BVAS) which I regard as a game changer.
“BVAS technology had helped to weed out ghost and illegal voters, eliminate multiple voting and return sanity to the elections.”
Relying on INEC report, the minister said BVAS, during the polls worked 97 per cent giving unparalleled credibility to the elections.
- NAN