Former Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has narrated how his office discredited the negative narrative of rigging the 2023 presidential election.
Mohammed narrated this in a paper presented at a Spokesperson Summit declared opened on Tuesday in Abuja by the incumbent Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris.
The former minister recalled that just before leaving office in 2023, the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari was faced with the allegations of rigging the presidential poll.
He said the allegation was largely centered around the delay in uploading results to the IReVportal which, according to him, played no role in the official collation of election results.
Mohammed said the development was compounded by misplaced sentiments, fueled by sections of the international media that had relied on questionable pre-election opinion polls and social media noise, suggesting that the Labour Party (LP) candidate had won the election.
In correcting the negative narrative, Mohammed said his office opted for an evidence-based approach provided to both local and foreign media organisations and influential think tanks.
“Our goal was to present them with irrefutable facts on how the election was won and lost.
“We met with journalists and representatives from Voice of America, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy Magazine, Associated Press, BBC, The Economist, Reuters, Bloomberg, Politico, Hudson Institute, U.S. Institute of Peace, Atlantic Council, and Chatham House, among others.
“To our surprise, many of these organisations were unfamiliar with Nigeria’s constitutional requirements for winning a presidential election.
“We explained that, under Chapter 6, Section 134 of the Constitution, a candidate must not only win the majority of votes but also secure at least 25% of the votes in no fewer than two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory,” he said.
Mohammed added, “Based on this, we made it clear that neither the PDP nor LP candidates had a viable path to victory.
We presented the breakdown: the LP candidate placed a distant third, trailing the APC candidate by approximately 2.7 million votes.
“The APC candidate not only won the highest number of votes but also secured 25 per cent of the vote in 29 states – well above the constitutional threshold.
“The PDP candidate, who came second, met the 25 per cent threshold in only 21 states, while the LP candidate achieved it in just 15 states. Both fell short of the constitutional criteria for victory”.
To further dispel the allegations of rigging, the former minister said they laid out compelling evidence that the APC lost in key states with high number of registered voters – Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, and Katsina – even though all had APC governors.
“If the APC had manipulated the process, why would it lose in its own strongholds?
“We highlighted that major APC figures lost their states in the presidential election: the party’s presidential candidate, the sitting president, the party chairman, the campaign director general, and several APC governors all lost their home states.
“If the party were truly adept at rigging, would it have allowed such high-profile defeats?”.
.Mohammed said that with the approach and engagements, they were able to effectively reshaped the global narrative.
He said .any of those they spoke with admitted they had been misled by the social media-driven hype around the LP candidate, flawed opinion polls, and a limited understanding of Nigeria’s electoral process.
The former minister, therefore asserted that changing a negative narrative about government policies “requires a strategic communication approach that builds trust, engages the public, and showcases tangible results”.
Mohammed said the same guiding principle were deployed in 2015, when the Nigerian military launched a massive offensive, recapturing most of the seized territories by the Biko Haram terrorists.
According to him,despite the government’s and military’s efforts, the prevailing narrative remained that Boko Haram still controlled the areas and was expanding its influence.
To change this narrative and convince Nigerians that the military had indeed reclaimed the captured territories,he said his office undertook strategic media tour of the liberated areas.
The summit themed “Integrity and the Evolving Role of Spokespersons in Leadership Communication was organised by the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) and the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation.
