Numerous international media outlets and think institutes have recognized that they were misled about Labour Party nominee Peter Obi’s chances of winning the 2023 Presidential election.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, made the announcement in London after wrapping up his engagements and talks with media outlets and policy institutes.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the minister was in Washington and London to defend the legality of the recently ended general elections and to redress the imbalance in the distorted narrative that had saturated the airwaves.
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The minister told reporters at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, where he finished his engagements, that his mission abroad was highly successful.
“We have been able to correct the imbalance in the reporting and we are leaving today with a better feeling. Most of the people we met agreed with us that they had been misinformed and they over-relied on social media hype,” he said.
According to the minister, many people were unaware of the conditions for winning the Nigerian presidential election until he informed them.
He stated that in addition to a plurality of votes, a candidate must receive one-quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states, which translates to 25 states, before being considered the winner.
“When we told many of those we met that the Labour Party scored one third of votes in only 15 of the 36 states they were shocked.
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“We also told them there is no pathway to victory for either the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or Labour Party because they did not meet the requirements to be declared winner,” he said.
Mohammed also explained why the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate, Sen. Bola Tinubu, had an advantage over the two other major competitors, Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), despite the fact that they all won in 12 states.
“We explained to them that it is not enough for you to win 12 states but what you scored in other states is also very important. For instance, in addition to winning 12 states, the APC came second in 19 other states with very high scores,” he said.
According to the minister, he also informed the media and think institutes that no party with no national reach and grassroots support could win the Presidential election.
Mohammed cited the Labour Party, which received only 315,000 votes in the entire North-East zone and 350,000 votes in the North-West because its candidate was little known and despised there.
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He claimed that in the same North-East and North-West zones where the APC and its candidate are popular, the vote total in each zone exceeded two million.
‘Unfortunately, with all these facts on ground, they earlier believed that Obi won the election. This was because of the wrong mindset they had before the polls based on the hyped activities of his followers on social media.
“They also developed the wrong mindset based on skewed and very unrepresentative opinion polls especially by Bloomberg which was uncritically reported by other international media.
”However, I am living in the U.S.A. and the UK satisfied because the wrong perceptions had been corrected and were changing,” he said.
The minister was questioned if INEC Chairman Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud kept his commitment made at Chatham House in January to hold free, fair, and credible elections and allow people’s votes to count.
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According to Mohammed, the INEC Chairman followed through on his pledge.
He explained that, contrary to popular opinion, the INEC Chairman did not guarantee to conduct elections online.
“Our laws today say all election management systems are done physically and manually. There is this misunderstanding about the INEC Result Viewing Centre (IREV).
‘IREV is not about collation and transmission of election. It is a platform for transparency to ensure that whatever is entered into Form EC8A is transmitted into IREV so that everyone can see it,” he said.
According to NAN, the minister met with international media outlets such as the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press, and Foreign Policy Magazine while in the United States.
He has also worked for the Reuters News Agency, The Politico, an international political journal, and Zenger News, a channel whose content is published on Forbes.
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Among the international think tanks he worked with were the US Institute of Peace, the Hudson Institute, The Atlantic Council, and the Wilson Institute.
He also attended the Council on International Relations, a well-known think tank on African politics and foreign relations that is chaired by a Nigerian, Dr Ebenezer Obadare.
Mohammed spoke with The Economist, The Guardian, African Confidential, The Spectator, Times Radio, and Africa Report in London.
He also met with the Royal African Society, the Royal United Service Institute, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House think tanks.
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