Lai Mohammed calls call for his arrest and prosecution “baseless”

Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, has dismissed calls for his arrest and prosecution as unjustifiable. The calls were made in response to his admonition of Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, over his alleged incitement of the public to violence. Speaking in London on Wednesday, Mohammed said he stood by his admonition of Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, insisting that his advice was never premised on falsehood.

The Minister asked what his offence was, questioning the need to arrest him for calling out the Vice Presidential candidate of the Labour Party for saying that if the President-elect Bola Tinubu was sworn-in on May 29 that would be the end of democracy in Nigeria. He also questioned the fake news in calling out Baba-Ahmed for stating that swearing-in Tinubu on May 29 is like swearing-in the military.

Mohammed noted that Baba-Ahmed had never denied his statement made on live television, and Obi had also not publicly called his running mate to order over the alleged treasonable utterances. The Minister insisted that the position of the law is clear: anyone aggrieved over election results should go to court and not threaten Nigerians or heat up the polity simply because they lost an election.

Mohammed also stressed that the APC won the presidential election “fair and square” and that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was right in declaring Tinubu the winner. He reassured Nigerians and the international community that the President-elect would be sworn-in on May 29.