Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has stated that the former Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had no realistic path to victory in the 2023 presidential election, even if he had polled as many as 10 million votes.
Mohammed made the assertion while speaking on Edmund Obilo’s State Affairs podcast, where he argued that Obi failed to meet the constitutional requirement of securing at least 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of the states of the federation.
According to him, regardless of the total number of votes Obi might have secured nationwide, his inability to achieve the mandatory spread across 25 states made winning the election impossible.
“Even if Obi had secured 10 million votes, he still wouldn’t have won because he did not obtain one-quarter of the votes in at least 25 states,” Mohammed said. “It is also on record that he was unable to deploy agents to about 40,000 polling units.”
Reflecting on the wider dynamics of the 2023 general election, particularly in Lagos State, the former minister noted that ethnic and religious sentiments played an unusually prominent role in influencing voter behaviour.
“For the first time in Nigeria’s political history, ethnicity and religion featured very prominently,” he said.
Mohammed also linked youth anger from the #EndSARS protests to voting patterns, especially in Lagos, suggesting that lingering resentment affected the ruling party’s fortunes.
“Many young people were seeking retribution, and that did not favour the APC or Bola Tinubu,” he added.
He further distinguished between different categories of elections in Nigeria, noting that presidential races are generally less personal than governorship or legislative contests.
“In presidential elections, voters may not feel a direct connection to any of the candidates. But governorship and legislative elections are more personal because the candidates live among the people they seek to govern,” he explained.
Speaking on President Bola Tinubu’s leadership style, Mohammed described him as loyal and steadfast, even toward allies who suffer electoral losses.
“Asiwaju is not the kind of leader who abandons people because they lost an election. He continues to encourage and support them,” he said.
He added that Tinubu’s calm and approachable personality often leads to an underestimation of his political depth.
“He is highly strategic and has a deeper understanding of Nigerian politics than many people realize,” Mohammed concluded.
