Ohanaeze Urges International Community To Disregard Lai Mohammed’s Statement On 2023 Presidential Election

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Friday, reacted to the recent remarks by the minister for culture and information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in Washington DC to the effect that the February 25, 2023 presidential election in Nigeria was the ‘fairest, most transparent and most authentic in the history of Nigeria’.

Ohanaeze recalled that Mr Mohammed used the occasion to level allegations of ‘treason and inviting insurrection’ against the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi and his vice, Dr Datti Ahmed’.

Ohanaeze took the minister to the memory lane, stating that on April 27, 2013, Mr Mohammed granted interview to the Premium times wherein he stated that ‘Democracy will fail in Nigeria unless APC wins in the 2015 election’.

The pan-Igbo group also recalled Mohammed claiming that the APC would form a parallel government in 2015 elections ‘if the elections are rigged by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP)’.

Ohanaeze, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Dr Alex Ogbonnia, said when Mohammed was interrogated further, he said that “it is therefore laughable that anyone will refer the statement on parallel government as treasonable,” adding that “there is no higher treason than the subversion of the people’s will’.

Ohanaeze added, “President Muhammadu Buhari had threatened that ‘the dog and the baboon will be getting soaked in blood’ if the 2011 election was rigged by the PDP.”

On the outcome of the 2023 elections, Ohanaeze said, “Lai Mohammed is reminded that European Union Election Observation Mission and several other bodies monitored the 2023 general election. The EU group remarked that ‘obstruction and organized violence limited the free expression of the will of the voters, despite efforts by civil society to promote democratic standards’.

“The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Yakubu Mahmood, has admitted this much when he stated that ‘the issues of logistics, election technology, the behaviour of some election personnel at different levels, and the attitude of some party agents and supporters added to the extremely challenging environment in the February 25, presidential and National Assembly elections’.

“Based on the above backdrop, Mr Peter Obi has advised Mr Lai Mohammed to stop the US junket; Obi condemned Mohammed’s trip as a waste of Nigeria’s resources and that it is laughable since most of those countries sent their representatives to monitor the election and have all received reports from the monitors, as well as from their embassies.

“Any discerning mind will easily acknowledge that history has taken a fantastic turn on Lai Mohhamed. Lai Mohammed is an extremist imperious demagogue with a dubious allegiance to democratic norms; a man who has both in the past and in the present subverted democratic ideals.”

Ohanaeze reminded Mohammed and APC ‘that Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed represent the New Nigerian spirit; a mystic force which neither Mohammed nor his pay masters can withstand’.

Quoting Ogbonnia, “It is therefore puerile to accuse Obi and Datti of treason for the simple reason that they expressed dissatisfaction with a process that was heavily compromised.

“The position of Ohanaeze is that INEC was heavily compromised; that INEC found it convenient to change the goal post in the middle of the game; and that INEC compromised not just its own guidelines for the election but also the provisions of the Electoral Act.

“And that Mr Obi and Datti Ahmed of the Labour Party won the 2023 presidential election.”

Ohanaeze tasked the Nigerian judiciary on objectivity, adding that, “Its place in history will be determined by how it handles the election matters brought before it.”

It urged the international community ‘to disregard the insidious shenanigans from Lai Mohammed as part of his incorrigible occupational obsessions’.