The many misconceptions about the 2023 elections are to say the least, baffling. Some commentators just wake up it appears, and make assertions that cannot pass any empirical examination. Babachir Lawal, the sacked Secretary to the Federal Government speaking lately, in trying to whip up public sentiments, and serenade the ego of Mr. Peter Obi, declared that the latter won the 2023 elections, and that Mr President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, came third in the election. This statement, to all intents and purposes, is sheer baloney. How could Peter Obi have won the election? Where could he even have got the winning votes from? What kind of demographics supports such a claim? What is the empirical support of this claim? Does Obi enjoy widespread support?
Lawal is making a shameless effort to delude his inner heart to approve of his bad behavior by himself, having betrayed his former benefactor, President Tinubu on account of the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC, which was the reason he gave for pulling out of the party. Also, he accused the APC of weaving plans to Islamise Nigeria. Unbeknownst to him, that everyone knew that he, Lawal had lobbied and failed to become the running mate of President Tinubu, who was then a candidate; so when Senator Kashim Shettima was announced as Tinubu’s running mate, he went bunkers. In the end, he neither delivered his home state of Adamawa to Peter Obi nor did he even deliver his polling unit and ward to his new found master. “Peter Obi won the election.” How?
In the run up to the election, pollsters gave Peter Obi false hope, predicting his victory, on the basis of his popularity in the Southern part of the country as a basis without considering other demographics. I want to believe that this is the contest Babachir Lawal is referring to. Peter Obi, in his heart of hearts knows that he didn’t win the election: someone that anchored his campaign on religious extremism declaring that, “Christians should take over the country” and by that alone, almost divided this great country on the scheme of religious bigotry and parochialism. That position was largely responsible for his sparse votes from the Northern states of the country. Not even in Adamawa State where Babachir Lawal is from, did Peter Obi win despite the skew in favor of Christianity in the locality and Lawal supposedly being their leader. The one of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar also anchored his own campaign on pro-North sentiments, and paid dearly for it; but Tinubu anchored his own campaign on pro-Nigeria sentiments. He was not just pan-Nigeria, his votes were gathered from across a whooping thirty-one states, save for the five states of the South-East.
It is indeed laughable therefore, that someone in trying to massage the ego of Peter Obi would voice that Obi won the election. How can? Even if we added 2million generous votes to Peter Obi’s total votes, he would still not be in the same threshold as President Tinubu. I sincerely hope that Mr. Lawal is of sound mind. Or is he just trying to console himself for plunging himself into a political cul-de-sac, by being stuck in the vainglorious belief of religious bigotry, and has now totally plummeted politically as shown by his abysmal performance at this last electoral outing. Just to make us hear him, he came up with this ridiculous claim to encourage the Obi-dients in their pleasure ride to the city of make-belief. It is the height of an ego-trip for any reasonable person to concoct that Obi won the 2023 general election; nothing, absolutely nothing at all supports such a bogus claim.
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