For not cautioning Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, his running mate Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), committed treason by association, Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information, explained on Wednesday.
A guest of Politics Today, a current affairs programme on Channels Television, Baba-Ahmed, told his host on March 22, that any attempt to swear in Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu into office on May 29, 2023, would amount to “end of democracy,” insisting that by not winning 25 per cent of the votes in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, had not met the constitutional requirement to be declared President by the Independent National Electoral Commission on March 1.
The Minister, who had been tackled for making a sweeping statement when he told foreign journalists during a trip to the US, recently in which he accused Obi and his running mate of having committed treason, told State House Correspondents on Wednesday that nobody had the right to call for insurrection in the country.
“I said Obi has every right to seek redress in court like Labour Party but nobody has the right to call for insurrection or to threaten to say that if the president-elect is sworn-in, that would be the end of democracy.
“And that was precisely what Obi’s running mate said on live television and I have not heard Obi rein him in or correct him. So, if your running mate says something, of course, he was saying on behalf of the party and on behalf of the candidate.
“That is why I said that was treason. For anybody to say that if a duly elected president in Nigeria is sworn in, that will be the end of democracy is treason. For anybody to say if you swear in a duly elected President, you are swearing the military, it is treason. So, I don’t see anything controversy in that.”
Explaining the rationale for his recent trip to the US and the UK, which he said was necessitated by the need to tell the world the true story of what transpired during the 2023 general elections, he stressed how President Muhammadu Buhari was very neutral during the exercise and how he did not confer any advantage on the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“I went to the US to balance the skewed report about the just concluded elections; and everywhere I went, I said very unambiguously that the last general elections in Nigeria are the most transparent. It was the freest and the most authentic Nigeria had ever held, and that is despite the effort of the opposition to delegitimise the election.
“And I put forward my position there that the two reasons the election was the best was one. That the introduction of technology especially, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System(BVAS), made it pretty difficult for anybody to do the usual things before like over-voting, stuffing of ballot boxes and the likes because once it takes your biometrics; you cannot vote twice.
“The first instance was that the president did not confer any advantage on his ruling party; and that as far as he was concerned, he would rather lose the election than win at all cost; and the result showed it.”