By Our Correspondent
Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, has alleged that Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, was the actual winner of last year’s presidential election.
Lawal, a long-time political figure and ally-turned-critic of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), made the claim on Monday while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Tonight. He said that contrary to the official declaration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner, field data collected during the polls pointed to Obi’s victory.
“Based on the facts at my disposal, Peter Obi won the election that produced Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s 16th president,” Lawal asserted.
The former SGF, who served under ex-President Muhammadu Buhari between 2015 and 2017 before his removal from office over allegations of mismanagement of humanitarian funds, maintained that his team closely tracked the election.
“We monitored the election, collected data, and tracked results from the field. Some of those results were altered,” he claimed.
Lawal, who has in recent months been openly critical of President Tinubu’s administration, also addressed the strained relationship between himself and the president. He accused Tinubu of being “arrogant” and of misconstruing the root of their differences.
“He is arrogant. The guy has an arrogance that belies definitions. The problem with Bola Tinubu is that he thinks I’m the one that offended him. I didn’t offend him — he offended me. He is full of himself, and he thinks that because he is now the so-called president… I believe he didn’t win the election,” Lawal said.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had in February 2023 declared Tinubu of the APC winner of the presidential election, securing 8.79 million votes against Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with 6.98 million votes, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party with 6.1 million votes. Both Atiku and Obi had challenged the result in court, alleging widespread irregularities, but the Supreme Court eventually upheld Tinubu’s victory.
