The Federal Government has admonished the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi from inciting people to violence over the outcome of the Presidential elections.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed gave the admonition in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organisations.
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN reports that the minister had so far engaged respectively the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine.
During the interactions with the media organisations, the minister said it was wrong for Obi on one breadth to seek redress in court over the outcome of the polls and on another breadth inciting people to violence.
“Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not the democrat that he claimed to be.
“A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election,” he said.
The minister said in challenging the election results, there was no pathway to victory for either Obi or Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party.
According to the minister, neither Obi nor Atiku met the constitutional requirements to be declared as president.
“The constitution has stringent criteria for anybody who wants to be president of the country.
“Not only must he have the plurality of vote cast in an election, he must also have scored one-quarter of votes cast in at least 25 states.
“Only the president-elect met the criteria by scoring 8.79 million votes and having one-quarter of all the votes cast in 29 states of the federation,” he said.
The minister said Atiku who came second with 6.9 million votes was only able to make one-quarter of the votes cast in 21 states.
He said Obi came third with 5.8 million votes but won only one-quarter of votes cast in 15 states.
“You cannot win an election in a poll where you came to a distant third position and failed to meet constitutional requirements,” the minister said
