"This is treason"— FG warns Peter Obi against fanning insurrection
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed gave the admonition in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organizations.
During the respective interactions with the media organizations, the minister said, it is wrong for Mr. Peter Obi on one breadth to seek redress in court over the outcome of the polls and on another breadth incite people to violence.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the minister is in Washington to engage with international media organizations and Think-tanks on the just concluded 2023 polls.
NAN reports that the minister had so far engaged respectively with the "Washington Post," Voice of America, Association Press, and Foreign Policy Magazine.
According to the minister, both Peter Obi and Atiku failed to meet 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 has 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 votes cast in 29 states of the federation," he said.
The Minister said that Atiku who came second with 6.9 million votes was only able to make one-quarter of the votes cast in 21 states.
He said that Peter Obi came third with 5.8 million votes but won only one-quarter of the 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 constitution requirements.
"Mr. Peter Obi, while complaining of fraud has not disowned his victory in Lagos," he said.
Elaborating on his mission to the U.S., the minister said that he was there to correct the negative narratives being promoted by naysayers and opposition on the election.
He said that the opposition, having lost in the election was alleging fraud, calling for its cancellation and the constitution of the interim Government.
"The election is the fairest and most credible because of the introduction of the Bimodal Voters Verification System (BVAS) which I regard as a game changer.
"We have come here to balance that skewed narrative and to tell the world unambiguously that the just concluded
general elections in Nigeria are the fairest, most transparent, and most authentic in the history of Nigeria.
BVAS technology helped to weed out ghost and illegal voters, eliminate multiple voting and return sanity to the elections.
Relying on the INEC report, the minister said BVAS, during the polls, worked 97 percent giving unparalleled credibility to the elections.
"Obi and his Vice, Datti Ahmed cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu of the All Progressive 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.
"Peter Obi's statement is that of a desperate person, and he is not the democrat he claimed to be.
"A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election," he said.
The Minister said in challenging the election results, there was no pathway to victory for either Peter Obi or Alhaji Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party. (PDP).
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