The minister made this statement on Wednesday in London in response to Elder Statesman and Pan Niger Delta Forum leader Chief Edwin Clark’s demand that he be detained and charged with disseminating “fake news” against Obi.

Mohammed insisted that his counsel to Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, was never founded on untruth and that he stuck by it.

“What will be my offence? Is it by chiding vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party who said on live television that if the President-elect Bola Tinubu is sworn-in on May 29 that that would be the end of democracy in Nigeria?

“Is it for chiding him for saying that swearing in Tinubu on May 29 is like swearing in the military?

“What is the fake news in that?” the minister queried.

He said Baba-Ahmed had never denied his statement made on the live television

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated this in Washington DC during his official engagements with some international media organizations, NAN reports.

He went on to assert that the fact that Bola Tinubu and Buhari both lost their home states of Katsina and Lagos to the opposition parties during the presidential election was sufficient evidence that the election was credible.

The minister is in Washington to discuss the recently concluded 2023 polls with foreign media outlets and think tanks.

He has so far interacted with the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press, and Foreign Policy Journal in that order.

The minister said in fulfilment of the President’s pledge to restore sanity to the electoral process, he resolved that he would not confer a special advantage on any political party, including the ruling All Progressives Congress, during the election.

He said during the past elections, the President ensured that nobody used the security agencies to rig the election in his favour but created a level-playing ground for the elections to take place.

“Proof of this resolution is that the President’s party lost the presidential election in Katsina, his home state.

“Equally, the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, lost in his state, Lagos, while the Chairman of the Party, Abdullahi Adamu, lost in Nasarawa state to the Labour Party.

“The Director-General of the Campaign Organisation of our party also lost to PDP in Plateau State.

“Nothing gives this election more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our bigwigs come from,” he said.

The minister added that APC lost in the four states with the highest number of votes in the elections – Katsina, Kano, Kaduna and Lagos even when they were the ruling party’s controlled states.

Mohammed said the allegations of fraud being bandied by the opposition and naysayers did not add up.

According to the minister, the controversy was generated because of the inability of INEC to upload the results of the presidential election in real time.

He said the controversy was absolutely unnecessary though it had been the fulcrum of the argument of the naysayers that elections were flawed.

INEC had come under fire over its inability to upload results immediately on its Result Viewing portal during the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25.

Mohammed, however, said the conclusion by the opposition and naysayers was based on ignorance of the role and functions of IReV.

He said IReV, a platform whereby election results at the polling level are uploaded, was not a tool for collation of election or to transmit results electronically.

“Under our laws today, management of election results is manual and the court has ruled that INEC has the exclusive right to determine the mode of election, its collation and transmission.

“What happened on the 25th of February was that INEC observed that the results of the presidential elections were not being viewed.

“INEC, suspecting cyber attack, withheld the uploading of the results in order to preserve the integrity of the data. It immediately proceeded to float an alternative platform while asking its technicians to investigate what happened to its original portal.”

The minister explained further that it took about 9pm for the alternative portal to start working. He said as soon as the original portal started working, the results were viewed from the two platforms.

“It is unfortunate that this is what the opposition are relying on to say the elections were rigged. So far, none of the political parties has come out to say that what is on Form EC8A is different from what was uploaded on IREV,” he said.

Speaking on delay in delivering election materials to certain areas, the minister said it was difficult in a country as diverse and complex as Nigeria for election materials to arrive at the same time everywhere.

He said with 176,846 polling units scattered all over the country with different topography, it would be difficult to deliver the materials simultaneously.

“In some areas, you need to use donkeys, human portals, boats to access some of these difficult areas. We also know the challenge of an unanticipated cash crunch that slowed down logistic movements.

“The redesigning of the naira did not help matters because some of the people who transported the materials insisted on cash payment which was not available,” he said.

Mohammed said the police report identified pockets of violence scattered all over the country but they were not substantial enough to discredit the polls.

Quoting the police report, the minister said there were 489 cases of electoral infractions during the election and 781 electoral offenders that would be charged to court.

In his analysis of the report, the minister said it was a ratio of one infraction in over 300 polling units which was not sufficient to void the elections.

This statement was made by Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture, during his appearance on the live “Good Morning Nigeria” program produced by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

Mohammed said that, given the time span and circumstances, the Buhari administration had lived up to Nigerians’ expectations.

Commenting on the administration’s accomplishments, Mohammed noted that in 2015, the entire North East region was inaccessible and that Boko Haram rebels were in charge of twenty of Borno State’s twenty-seven Local Government Areas.

The minister said presently no part of Nigeria’s territory was under the occupation and control of Boko Haram.

He recalled that in 2015, the country was the number one importer of rice from Thailand but with the administration’s policies and programmes on agriculture, Nigeria is self-sufficient in the staple and food in general.

According to him, millions of farmers had been empowered with the Anchor Borrowers Programme while the number of rice mills in Nigeria had increased from two in 2015 to 60 presently

Mohammed said ten million pupils were being fed daily while two million households were benefitting from the administration’s social intervention programmes, Conditional Cash Transfer, among others.

He said, “We completed the Lagos-Ibadan expressway as well as the second Niger bridge, which was a mirage for more than three decades.

“In spite of all the sabotage, today we’ve worked, the Lagos-Ibadan railway, Abuja-Kaduna railway and Ajaokuta- Warri railway which weren’t in existence before we came.’’

The assertion was made by a fifth columnist attempting to destabilize the country, according to Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, who spoke on the TVC live program “This Morning.”

Bola Tinubu, the candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), would win the elections in 2023, the minister claimed during the program.

Mohammed, who announced this on Tuesday, claimed that the opposition is undermining the elections by spreading false information.

According to him, fake news and misinformation pose a serious threat to the elections because they have the power to thwart their success.

”I can say, unequivocally, that there has been a worrisome and astronomical increase in the use of fake news and disinformation, making this a clear and present danger to the success of the elections. This increase is undoubtedly the work of some destabilizing agents, some of them linked to the opposition.

”Their sole aim is to destabilize the electoral process and plunge the nation into crisis,” he added.

He reaffirmed that some miscreants with access to phones and data would not be permitted to destabilize the nation led by President Muhammudu Buhari’s administration.

The government is searching for the best ways to ensure that the agents of destabilization do not obstruct the success of the elections with their shady use of fake news and disinformation, he added as he issued a warning to those who spread it.

At the 17th edition of President Muhammadu Buhari’s scorecard series from 2015–2023 on Tuesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, gave the promise.

“Let me use this opportunity to respond to inquiries from the media over a widely-circulated report, credited to an INEC official that the 2023 general elections face a serious threat of cancellation due to insecurity,” he said.

“The position of the Federal Government remains that the 2023 elections will be held as planned. Nothing has happened to change that position. We are aware that INEC is working with the security agencies to ensure that the elections are successfully held across the country.

“The security agencies have also continued to assure Nigerians that they are working tirelessly to ensure that the elections are held in a peaceful atmosphere. Therefore, there is no cause for alarm.”

The minister’s assurance followed killings by gunmen and bandits in several parts of the country.

INEC had on Monday raised the alarm over the rising security situation across the country and its impact on the 2023 general elections.

Despite efforts by the security agencies and the Federal Government, gunmen continued to attack offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and security formations among others, killing several people.

Worried by the situation, INEC lamented that over 41 attacks had been carried out against its offices across 14 states since the 2019 general election, with the South-East recording 13 attacks.

The minister said this at the ‘sixth edition of the PMB Administration Scorecard Series (2015-2023)’, launched in October to showcase the numerous achievements of the Buhari administration.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and his counterparts in Works and Housing; Transportation, Aviation as well as Interior have already presented their scorecards.

Ministers of Water Resources, Mines and Steel Development, Power, Police Affairs, Women Affairs, Youth and Sports Development, and Education will all present theirs this month.

“I make bold to say that no Administration, since the beginning of the current political dispensation in 1999, has done more than the Buhari Administration in supporting states with all sorts of financial interventions,” the minister told reporters.

“When the Administration assumed office in 2015, at least 27 states could not pay salaries. Imagine what would have happened if Mr. President had not offered a helping hand, without discrimination, to the states?

“But for Mr. President, most of the states would have been plunged into a serious socio-economic crisis, with dire consequences for the country.

“Please note that the support to the states came at a time when national resources had dwindled drastically, and also at a time of competing needs in many areas, including infrastructure, security, global pandemic, etc.”

The Minister said this while speaking in Abuja when he appeared before Senator Danladi Sankara, All Progressives Congress, APC, Jigawa North-West led Senate Committee on Information to defend the budget for 2023.

He emphasized to the Senate that his Ministry needs more funds as a matter of urgency to tackle the scourge of fake news, hate speech and propagate the achievements of government in the last 7 and a half years.

Mohammed while lamenting the paucity of funds and its impact on the activities of the Ministry described the situation as “very sad”.

He stressed that out of the total of N2.5 billion appropriated to the Ministry and all of its agencies for capital projects in 2022, only a paltry N1.7 billion was released representing 41% to undertake 22 different projects.

The Minister who lamented the prospect of having the capital budget for the Ministry and its entire agencies in 2023 slashed to N869 million complained that only the sum of N525 million representing 58% of the Ministry’s allocation was released for overheads in 2022.

In his remarks, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Sankara explained to the Minister that the slash in budget was not limited to his Ministry.

The Chairman pointed out that capital votes in the 2022 budget has dropped from N2.5trillion to N1trillion in the budget for 2023.

Responding, the Information Minister acknowledged that the paucity of funds was not peculiar to his Ministry.

He, however, appealed to the Senate Committee and the Federal Government to increase the purse of the Ministry by granting it special considerations at a time when government is faced with serious challenges.

He said, “If there is any ministry that should adequately funded and not suffer from yearly budget cut is the Information Ministry. “We’re going to have a very difficult year and I  don’t know how we are going to do it.

“Yes, while it is true that paucity of funds has affected all government ministries and agencies it is important for government to at a time it is going through challenges rely on its media to put the people’s mind at rest and ask them not to panic and at a time the government is now swimming of fake news misinformation”.

The Minister noted that the latest of such misinformation that needs urgent repair is the US Security Alert on Abuja which he said has affected the image and economy of the country.

He said, “Even if the govt stops working, it should continue to publicise what it has done.”

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, made his concern known during the welcome session of the global media and information literacy week organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

The minister noted the need for individuals to be adequately equipped with enough knowledge to manage the information at their disposal.

Mohammed said, “The theme of this year’s Global MIL week, which is ‘Nurturing Trust: A Media and Information Literacy Imperative’ is not only apt but also timely as our world and its leaders contend with the challenge of identifying what is true and what is false, in view of the use of media and information.

“As I ponder on the state of our world and the enormous challenge it faces, especially with the unregulated use of social media and other digital platforms, I see the urgent need for every person to be equipped with the ability to critically evaluate and wisely use information at their disposal.”

Speaking further, Mohammed said, “I am optimistic that, starting from the parallel sessions which commence immediately to the last plenary session on Friday morning, contributions and questions will all be geared towards finding the linkages to building trust among our societies and individuals through the use of media and information literacy.

“As I urge you all to give this your best attention, knowing that the world awaits the outcome of this global MIL week, I warmly welcome you, once again, to Nigeria. I encourage you all to discover Abuja and enjoy your stay”.

The government explained that this is to ensure the process is seamless, fair and credible.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed this at a three-day capacity-building workshop on the 2023 Population and Housing Census for State Directors and Management Staff of the National Orientation Agency.

The Minister, who was represented by the Director General, NOA, Garba Abari, added that this was important as the world has moved to a digital era.

He said, “The idea of a digital census being pursued by the NPC and the assiduous plans by the commission towards the 2023 national census is indeed a novelty that must be commended. This is because it allows us to deploy technology towards addressing national development concerns.

“The idea is to ensure the exercise is credible, fair and inclusive. The digital census being planned is what is expected at a time when our world is being increasingly digitalised. I commend the commission and I want to urge you to give Nigeria a transparent census exercise.’’

The Chairman of the National Population Commission, Nasir Kwarra, said the commission needed collaboration to educate Nigerians and purge them of wrong perceptions about the census in the country.

He said, “We require solid collaboration in information, enlightenment, and advocacy not only to mobilise the entire populace for the 2023 Population and Housing Census but also to help to clarify possible misrepresentation and misperception that are bound to occur in the process.”