The Federal Government has warned Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against committing treason, by inciting people to pepetuate violence over the outcome of the Presidential election.
The warning was issued by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations.
TNN reports that the Minister, who is in Washington to interact with international media organisations and Think-tanks on the just concluded 2023 polls, had so far engaged respectively with the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine.
While speaking at the respective interactions with the media organisations, Mohammed stated that it was wrong for Obi on one breadth to seek redress in court over the outcome of the polls and on another breadth inciting people to violence.
According to him, “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.”
He further said, “Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not the democrat that he claimed to be”, adding that “A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election”.
The minister explained that in challenging the election results, there was no pathway to victory for either Obi or the Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.
He reiterated that 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 vote cast in an election, but 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 vote cast in 29 states of the federation”.
He noted that Atiku who came second with 6.9 million votes was only able to make one-quarter of the votes cast in 21 states, while 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 to a distant third position and failed to meet constitutional requirements.”
“Peter Obi, while complaining of fraud has not disowned his victory in Lagos”.
