Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has accused Labour Party’s Peter Obi of treason after he failed to openly warn his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, about the comments he made on live television.
On March 22, Baba-Ahmed appeared on Channels Television and declared that Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima’s upcoming administration will be similar to a military rule.
He then petitioned the Nigerian government and the judiciary to prevent it while they still had the power to do so.
“If you swear in people who have not satisfied the requirement (of 25 per cent in the FCT), you have by so doing ended democracy. The crisis I am telling you about is that our democracy is going to end by the way we’re going,” Mr Baba-Ahmed told the hosts of Politics Today.
He continued by saying that Mr Tinubu and Mr Shettima still needed to fulfill the constitutional requirements in order to take office on May 29, the day they would be sworn in as the country’s President and Vice President, respectively.
Mohammed said that these remarks constituted treason since they posed a threat to the nation’s internal security.
“That’s why it’s an act of treason, for anybody to say if a duly elected president in Nigeria is sworn in, that will be the end of democracy.
“It’s treason for anybody to say if you swear in a duly elected president, you’re swearing in the military. It is crazy. So, I don’t see anything controversial in that,” Mohammed said.
By neglecting to respond to the remarks made by his running mate, Peter Obi, according to Mohammed, had become complicit in the crime.
Mohammed argued that nobody has the right to make threats that the end of democracy would result from the inauguration of the President-elect, despite the fact that Mr. Obi was legally entitled to seek redress in court.
“That was precisely what the running mate of Mr Peter Obi said on live television and I have not heard Peter Obi rein him in or correct him,” he said.
“So, if your running mate said something, of course, he is saying it on behalf of the party and that of the candidate.”
According to the Minister, the February 25 presidential election was “the most transparent, freest and authentic ever held despite the effort of the opposition to delegitimise the election.”
Peter Obi formally filed his lawsuit on March 21 at the Presidential Election Petition Court contesting the outcome of the election.