2023: Presidential Poll: Federal Government Blasts Labour Party, PDP Over Attack On President Buhari

By Damilare Adeleye

The Federal Government has blasted opposition parties for attacking President Muhammadu Buhari over his recent comment on the 2023 presidential election.

The government described the opposition as “shameless sore losers” of the general election.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, said this in a statement issued on Sunday.

He said the position of the President that the opposition in the 2023 presidential election lost in the poll due to their overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves is incontrovertible.

“Opposition’s overconfidence going into the election stemmed in part from the blitzkrieg of social media propaganda as well as faulty and procured opinion polls.

“These were apparently meant to hoodwink their foreign backers and a section of the international media into uncritically reporting that they were coasting home to victory, when they were indeed heading into the ravine of defeat,” he said in the statement.

Mohammed advised the opposition to stop their endless griping over the polls which they lost, adding the president deserves accolades for delivering the best election in Nigeria’s history.

”President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured.

“The President would rather lose his state and many of his party’s strongholds than tamper with the fidelity of the election, and that is why he provided a level-playing field for all parties,” he said.

Mohammed further stated that the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu, won the presidential election fair and square, having clinched the majority of the votes cast.

He added that Tinubu surpassed the constitutionally-stipulated 25 per cent of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

”Going by the results, none of the opposition parties met any of the conditions stipulated for winning the presidential election.

“They did not even come close, in spite of their pre-election grandstanding.

”They (opposition) keep leaning on some international observers to justify their fraudulent claim that the election was rigged,” he said.

”They also forgot that the African Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria said the atmosphere was generally calm and peaceful in 95 per cent of the polling units visited.

“It is on the strength of these reports that many nations, including the US and the UK, wasted no time in congratulating the victorious APC Presidential Candidate,” he said.

The minister slammed the opposition for continuously seeking to mislead the world by clutching at the weak straw that results were not immediately uploaded onto the IReV Portal.

He stressed that the portal had no role to play in the collation of election results.

”The opposition’s insinuation that the failure to immediately upload the result of the presidential election onto IReV affected the credibility of the election is a fraud.

“It is an act of blackmail and deceit by desperate individuals.

”The opposition Labour Party, in particular, will go down in the history books as the first-ever distant third-place finisher in a presidential election anywhere to have bold-facedly claimed victory,” he said.