Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed has told the opposition parties to stop ‘grieving’ over the 2023 presidential election and accept defeat over the election they lost woefully.
The minister said both Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the election due to overconfidence and complacency.
In a statement issued Sunday in Abuja by his Special Assistant (Media), Segun Adeyemi, the minister said: “Mr. President’s analysis on the reasons for the opposition’s loss in the 2023 elections was incontrovertible.
“President Buhari deserves nothing but accolades for delivering undoubtedly the best election in Nigeria’s history; the tempestuous but predictable reaction to the President’s comments by the opposition has shown them for what they are: shameless sore losers.
“President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured. The President would rather lose his state and many of his party’s strongholds than tamper with the fidelity of the election, and that is why he provided a level playing field for all parties.”
He, however, stressed that “the opposition’s overconfidence going into the election stemmed in part from the blitzkrieg of social media propaganda as well as faulty and procured opinion polls, which were apparently meant to hoodwink their foreign backers and a section of the international media into uncritically reporting that they were coasting home to victory when they were indeed heading into the ravine of defeat.”
The minister further said the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, won the presidential election fair and square, clinching the majority of the votes cast and surpassing the constitutionally-stipulated 25% of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
The minister said: “Going by the results, none of the opposition parties met any of the conditions stipulated for winning the presidential election. They didn’t even come close, in spite of their pre-election grandstanding.
“They (opposition) keep leaning on some international observers to justify their fraudulent claim that the election was rigged.”
Continuing, Mohammed said, “They conveniently forgot what Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the revered US diplomat who co-led the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute International Election Observation Mission to Nigeria said that the APC candidate undoubtedly won the polls.
“They also forgot that the African Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria said the atmosphere was generally calm and peaceful in 95% of the polling units visited,” adding that “it is on the strength of these reports that many nations, including the US and the UK, wasted no time in congratulating the victorious APC presidential candidate.”
On IReV
On the controversial IReV portal, Mohammed said: “The opposition’s insinuation that the failure to immediately upload the result of the presidential election onto IReV affected the credibility of the election is a fraud. It is an act of blackmail and deceit by desperate individuals.
“The opposition Labour Party, in particular, will go down in the history books as the first-ever distant third-place finisher in a presidential election anywhere to have bold-facedly claimed victory.”
PDP replies
But the PDP insisted its candidate won the poll, and described as subjudice claims by the minister as another attempt by the APC-led government to bully and blackmail the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The party, made the position known in a statement Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, in Abuja.
PDP said it is “appalling that Lai Mohammed could attempt to defend the outcome of a fraudulently conducted election which has been adjudged as the worst in the history of elections in Nigeria and which has attracted national and international outrage against the Buhari administration.”
The statement reads: “The PDP is however not surprised that Lai Mohammed will continue in the trajectory of the Buhari-led APC administration which is notorious for lying, deceit, and falsehood.
“Nigerians are aware that by the authentic results obtained from the Polling Units, Atiku Abubakar and not the APC candidate met all the conditions stipulated for the winning of Presidential election; the reason the compromised Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) refused to transmit directly and announce results as obtained from the Polling Units as required by law.
“The PDP for the umpteenth time cautions the APC and the Buhari-led Federal Executive against its furtive attempts to bully the judiciary in the handling of the Presidential election petitions pending before the Tribunal.
“The facts of the rigging of the February 25, 2023 Presidential election are well known to Nigerians, and the PDP will not relent until it reclaims its mandate at the Tribunal.”
LP too
In a similar reaction, the LP said “APC murdered sleep by rigging election and must live with the consequences.”
This was contained in a statement Sunday by the Acting National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Obiora Ifoh.
“Few days after President Muhammadu Buhari made that heavily flawed and erroneous remarks on the outcome of the 2023 presidential election where he claimed that the opposition parties lost the presidential election due to their “overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves”, it is hearth-wrenching to hear the Honourable Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, still progressing with that warped, illogical and incongruous concept.
“We would rather not join issues with a man who is famous for constantly prescribing doses of expired and ineffectual propaganda to Nigerians.
“His ill-fated and hugely failed trip to United Kingdom and United States where he attempted to redeem the grossly battered democratic credentials of this present administration; spending millions of tax payers’ money to defend an indefensible action is yet another tragedy of President Buhari’s 8 years leadership.
“It is only the blind that will continue to insist that the 2023 presidential election which was massively rigged was free, fair and credible. As we have said earlier, the opposition political parties lost the election because the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC jettisoned the electoral act, having not uploaded the result from the polling unit in real time as promised and in so doing, created room for riggers to have a field day.
“The election witnessed unprecedented magnitude of violence, ballot snuffing, snatching and manipulations of result from the collation centres, using thugs, security agencies, which included police, army amongst others.
“All these issues and a lot more were captured, well documented and have been taken to the appeal tribunal and the matters are ongoing. Mr. Lai Mohammed need not preempt the tribunal as his actions are contemptuous and could be used against him.
“We just want the Honourable Minister to know that by rigging the 2023 general election, himself, his party, All Progressives Congress and the leader of the party, President Buhari have murdered sleep and they do not deserve peace.”
