The federal government has described the opposition parties attacking President Muhammadu Buhari over his recent comment on the 2023 presidential elections as “shameless sore losers”.

In a statement on Sunday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said the Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi and that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar lost the election despite gaining traction before the election.

The minister reiterated the position of the president that the opposition in the 2023 presidential election lost in the poll due to their overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves.

“Opposition’s overconfidence going into the election stemmed in part from the blitzkrieg of social media propaganda, as well as faulty and procured opinion polls.

“These were apparently meant to hoodwink their foreign backers and a section of the international media into uncritically reporting that they were coasting home to victory when they were indeed heading into the ravine of defeat,” he said.

Mr Mohammed advised the opposition to stop their endless gripping over the polls, which they lost, adding the president deserves accolades for delivering the best election in Nigeria’s history.

“President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured.

“The president would rather lose his state and many of his party’s strongholds than tamper with the fidelity of the election, and that is why he provided a level-playing field for all parties,” he said the candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu, won the presidential election fair and square, clinching the majority of the votes cast,” Mr Mohammed said.

He added that Mr Tinubu surpassed the constitutionally stipulated 25 per cent of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

The minister added that both Messrs Obi and Abubakar failed to meet the constitutionally stipulated conditions for the presidential seat.

“They did not even come close, in spite of their pre-election grandstanding,” Mr Mohammed said. “They (opposition) keep leaning on some international observers to justify their fraudulent claim that the election was rigged.”

Mr Mohammed referred to the opposition to the conclusion by Mr Johnnie Carson, the revered U.S. diplomat, that the APC candidate “undoubtedly won the polls”.

Mr Carson, according to the minister, co-led the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) International Election Observation Mission to Nigeria.

Be added, “It is on the strength of these reports that many nations, including the US and the UK, wasted no time in congratulating the victorious APC Presidential Candidate.”

The minister slammed the opposition for continuously seeking to mislead the world by clutching at the weak straw that results were not immediately uploaded onto the IReV Portal.

“The opposition’s insinuation that the failure to immediately upload the result of the presidential election onto IReV affected the credibility of the election is a fraud.

“It is an act of blackmail and deceit by desperate individuals.

“The opposition Labour Party, in particular, will go down in the history books as the first-ever distant third-place finisher in a presidential election anywhere to have bold-facedly claimed victory,” he said.

(NAN)