The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has advised the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party(LP) and others to call off their endless griping over the February 25, 2023 presidential election which they lost woefully.
Mohammed said PDP, LP or their respective candidates – former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi and other candidates from fringe political parties knew very well that they deserved to lose the election due to crass display of overconfidence and complacency by each of them.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, the Minister submitted that President Buhari’s position on the reasons for the opposition’s loss in the 2023 elections was incontrovertible.
He said the President 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.Recall that President Buhari a few days ago said the opposition parties lost the election due to overconfidence.
”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 said.
The Minister said 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 said the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), 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.
”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,” he stated.
