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President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime has continued its media blitz in the U.S. to persuade foreign interests that the February 25 presidential election was not rigged in favour of the ruling APC standard-bearer Bola Tinubu.
Mr Tinubu was declared president-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission amid cries of foul play by the main opposition parties’ presidential flag bearers, Atiku Abubakar (of PDP) and Peter Obi (of Labour Party). International and local observers decried pockets of violence, widespread voter intimidation and lack of transparency during the election.
But the regime insisted that Mr Buhari delivered on his pledge to leave behind a legacy of free, fair and credible elections in 2023. However, the incumbent himself violated electoral regulations when he displayed his ballot paper to show the public whom he voted for during the presidential poll.
During his engagements with international media organisations and think tanks, the regime’s propaganda minister Lai Mohammed in Washington DC stated that Messrs Buhari and Tinubu losing in their home states, Katsina and Lagos, respectively, proves that the election was free, fair and credible.
But major opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, are questioning INEC’s lack of transparency in uploading the election results in real-time.
The minister said, in fulfilment of the president’s pledge to restore sanity to the electoral process, Mr Buhari resolved that he would not confer a special advantage on any political party, including APC, during the election.
Mr Mohammed explained that law enforcement agents were not used to rig the election in favour of any party or politician.
“A proof of this resolution is that the president’s party lost the presidential election in Katsina, his home state. Equally, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, lost in his state, Lagos, while the chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, lost in Nasarawa state to the Labour Party,” the information minister told journalists in the U.S.
He added, “The director-general of the campaign organisation of our party also lost to PDP in Plateau state. Nothing gives this election more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our bigwigs come from.”
The minister added that APC lost in the four states (Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Lagos) with the highest number of votes in the elections even though they are states controlled by the ruling party.
(NAN)
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