Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, has asked opposition parties to desist from “bleating” about the outcome of the presidential election.
While speaking on Thursday at a meeting with APC governors
in Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari said while the All Progressives Congress
(APC) was working hard to retain the presidency, opposition parties were
basking in the euphoria of “false hope”.
He said a combination of “overconfidence, complacency, and
bad tactical moves” made Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) lose to President-elect Bola Tinubu.
The opposition parties reacted by criticising the
president’s comment, claiming that the election was rigged in favour of the
APC.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Segun Adeyemi, special
assistant to the minister, quoted him as saying that the opposition parties
should stop their “endless griping” over the election.
The minister said the opposition parties lost the
presidential poll woefully and that Buhari’s “analysis” of the election is
accurate.
“President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by
delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured,”
Mohammed said.
“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.”
The minister said the opposition’s overconfidence ahead of
the elections was inspired by social media propaganda and opinion polls
“procured” 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”.
“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 said.
“They (the opposition) keep leaning on some international
observers to justify their fraudulent claim that the election was rigged. They
conveniently forgot what Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the revered US diplomat who
co-led the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican
Institute (IRI) 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.”
The minister said it is on the strength of the reports that
many nations, including the US and the UK, “wasted no time in congratulating”
Tinubu.
“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,” he said.
”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.”
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