The Federal Government says President Muhammadu Buhari has delivered on his pledge to leave behind a legacy of free, fair and credible elections in the conduct of 2023 polls.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated this in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations.
The minister is in Washington to engage with international media organisations and Think tanks on the just-concluded 2023 polls.
The minister has so far engaged respectively with the “Washington Post”, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine.
The minister said in fulfilment of the President’s pledge to restore sanity into the electoral process, he resolved that he would not confer special advantage on any political party, including the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) during the election.
He said during the past elections, the President ensured that nobody used the security agencies to rig the election in his favour but created a level-playing ground for the elections to take place.
“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, Abdulahi Adamu, lost in Nasarawa State to the Labour Party.
“The Director-General of the Campaign Organisation of our party also lost to PDP in Plateau State.
“Nothing gives this elections more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our big wigs come from,” he said.
The minister added that APC lost in the four states with the highest number of votes in the elections – Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Lagos even when they were the ruling party’s controlled states.
Mohammed said the allegations of fraud being bandied by the opposition and naysayers did not add up.
According to the minister, the controversy was generated because of the inability of INEC to upload the results of the Presidential election real time.
