FG Warns Obi Against Inciting Violence

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has been warned against inciting people to violence over the outcome of the presidential election.

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, gave this admonition in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations on the just concluded 2023 polls. 

Some of the media organisations include the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press, and Foreign Policy Magazine. 

Speaking during the interactions with the media organisations, Mohammed said, “Obi and his vice, Datti Ahmed, cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the President-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress is sworn in on the 29th of May, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria. 

He added, “This is treason. You cannot be inviting insurrection, and this is what they are doing.”

Mohammed likens Obi to a desperate person

The minister of Information said, “Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person.” He also stressed that Obi is not the Democrat he claims to be. According to him, a  democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election.”

Also, Mohammed noted that there was no pathway to victory for either Obi or Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party as they did not meet the constitutional requirements to be declared as president.

Speaking further, Mohammed explained that the constitution has stringent criteria for anybody who wants to be president of the country. He hinted that the candidate must not only “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.”

He said, “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.” 

The information minister said Atiku came second with 6.9 million votes and 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 the votes cast in 15 states.

Mohammed maintained that Obi cannot win an election in a poll where he “came to a distant third position and failed to meet constitutional requirements.”