Mr Babachir Lawal, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation—SGF, under the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, has insisted that Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party–LP, won the February 25 presidential election in Nigeria.
In a statement, Babachir disclosed that the officially declared winner, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress—APC, came a distant third behind Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party—PDP.
The former SGF stated that he came to the conclusion following bits and pieces of information from various sources of factual data he independently put together.
He said, “I have resisted the temptation to engage in the contemporary political discourse since the May 2023 election faux pas. I did this for two reasons. The first being that as an active player in the drama, I needed time to analyse and digest the data that led to the outcome(s) so I could arrive at an informed decision.
“The second, being that the rainy season had just set in and it was necessary that I focused my attention on my farms, which are the mainstay of my livelihood.
“The current topical issues for political discourse and inquiry are whether or not Bola Tinubu won the presidential election and/or that he was apriori, qualified to participate in the election given his murky biodata as is now being publicly unveiled daily in an avalanche.
“My answer to the first inquiry is that regardless of whatever INEC or Appeal Court said or did, Bola did not win the election. Right from the start of the campaigns, Bola knew he was not going to win the election in a free and fair contest so he decided to go by all means.
“Available factual data as aggregated from several independent sources indicate that Obi got the majority votes while Atiku came second. Bola came a distant third in the number of votes scored,” he argued.
Also, on Tinubu’s qualification for the election, Babachir noted that given the now unfolding drama about who or what Tinubu actually is, common sense should have convinced him to voluntarily excuse himself from participation in the election.
Babachir said he believed that Tinubu still has the time and opportunity to save himself what he described as the ‘public humiliation and embarrassment to his person’, both locally and internationally by resigning to give more attention to his health.
“After all, no one knows about the truism of these severely embarrassing and humiliating exposures about his person than the man himself.
“Leadership is all about integrity; sound pedigree, trustworthiness and the ability to unite and instil hope and confidence in the people one seeks to lead. In these qualities, most Nigerians are in total agreement that Bola has them in very short supply indeed.
“But now, six months down the line, the chicken has come home to roost as Nigerians have come to the realisation that we have not got what we deserve politically”.
