Former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Lai Mohammed, has said former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi could not have emerged president in the 2023 general election, even if he had secured 10 million votes.

Mohammed insisted that Obi was neither the winner of the election nor a victim of rigging, contrary to widespread claims by some of the candidate’s supporters.

The former minister made the remarks while speaking on Edmund Obilo’s podcast, State Affairs, where he explained the constitutional requirements for winning Nigeria’s presidential election.

According to him, the constitution stipulates that a candidate must score the highest number of votes nationwide and secure at least one-quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states to be declared president.

“Even if Peter Obi had won 10 million votes, he could not have become president,” Mohammed said.

“After the election, its legitimacy was being questioned. If you went to social media in 2023, you would feel the Labour Party had won the election. They were everywhere online.

“But they did not win the election, and they were not rigged out.”

Mohammed said he and his team travelled abroad after the election to engage international media organisations and policy think tanks in the United States and the United Kingdom, where they explained why Obi could not have emerged victorious.

“I took it upon myself and my team to meet think tanks in the US, the UK, and international media, and we explained to them why Peter Obi could not have won the presidential election,” he said.

Providing a breakdown of the results, Mohammed stated that Obi finished third, behind Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

“The results are there: Obi did not come first; he did not even come second. He came a close third to Atiku,” he said.

He added that while Obi secured one-quarter of the votes in 15 states, Atiku achieved the threshold in 21 states, while Tinubu met the constitutional requirement in 29 states and also recorded the highest number of votes nationwide.

Mohammed further argued that the opposition could have produced a different outcome if Obi had remained in the PDP alongside Atiku.

“Obi was not the biggest headache, and I think that if he had stayed with Atiku, the PDP would have won,” he added.