Again, Lai Mohammed Faults Opposition’s Rigging Claims

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has urged opposition parties to stop protesting the outcome of the 2023 presidential election and accept their loss.

He denounced claims that the elections were rigged as “fraudulent” and emphasized that Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party lost the election due to overconfidence and complacency.

In a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja, Mohammed’s Special Assistant (Media), Segun Adeyemi, stated that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, won the election legitimately and met the constitutional requirement of receiving at least 25% of the votes cast in each of two-thirds of all the states in the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

He 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.”

The minister also defended Buhari’s verdict that the opposition parties lost the presidential poll due to overconfidence.

“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, adding that 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,’’ Mohammed added.

He suggested that the opposition’s misplaced confidence was a product of social media propaganda and flawed opinion polls that were intended to deceive their foreign backers and a section of the international media into reporting that they were poised for victory when they were in fact headed for defeat.

He 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 per cent of the polling units visited,’’ he said, 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.”