Foreign media outlets and Think tanks have admitted that they were misinformed that Peter Obi won the 2023 polls — Lai Mohammed

Some international media organisations and Think tanks have admitted that they were misinformed about the chances of the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, winning the 2023 Presidential polls.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this in London when he concluded his engagements and meetings with the media houses and Policy Institutes. The minister said he was in Washington and London to defend the legitimacy of the just concluded general elections and correct the imbalance in the skewed narrative which had pervaded the air on the polls.

“Unfortunately, with all these facts on the ground, they (foreign organisations) earlier believed that Obi won the election. This was because of the wrong mindset they had before the polls based on the hyped activities of his followers on social media. They also developed the wrong mindset based on skewed and very unrepresentative opinion polls, especially by Bloomberg, which was uncritically reported by other international media.”

We have been able to correct the imbalance in the reporting and we are leaving today with a better feeling. Most of the people we met agreed with us that they had been misinformed and they over-relied on social media hype,” he said.

Mr Mohammed revealed that not until he educated the foreign outlets, many were unaware of the requirements to win a presidential election in Nigeria.
“When we told many of those we met that the Labour Party scored one-third of votes in only 15 of the 36 states, they were shocked. We also told them there is no pathway to victory for either the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or Labour Party because they did not meet the requirements to be declared winner,” stated the information minister.

Mr Mohammed said he also explained the edge APC and its candidate, Bola Tinubu, had over the two other major contenders, Mr Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.