The Federal Government has accused the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, of treason over the statement of his running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, that if the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is sworn in on May 29, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated this in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations and Think-tanks on the just concluded 2023 polls.
He admonished Obi, not to incite people to violence over the outcome of the Presidential election.
Mohammed said it was wrong for 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 had so far engaged respectively with the “Washington Post”, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine.
The minister said, “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.
“Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not the democrat that he claimed to be.
“A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election.”
He said in challenging the election results, there was no pathway to victory for either Obi or Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to the minister, 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 has the plurality of vote cast in an election, 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 said.
Mohammed said 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 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 constitutional requirements.
“Peter Obi, while complaining of fraud has not disowned his victory in Lagos,” he said.
