The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mr Nyesom Wike, has dismissed allegations that he rigged the 2023 presidential election in the South-South in favour of President Bola Tinubu. He recently had his say while addressing journalists in Abuja, and Nigerians have been reacting.
Describing the claim as a baseless narrative propagated primarily on social media, Wike stated that the results were the product of a calculated electoral strategy aimed at neutralising major political threats rather than illegal manipulation.
Responding to critics who accused him of altering result sheets in favour of Tinubu, Nyesom added that G5 governors ensured the votes went to Peter Obi in specific areas to split the opposition base and suppress Atiku’s margin.
His words, “People who don’t understand, how can they say I rigged the election? How would I have done it? So, I just took the result sheets, wrote it, and gave it to INEC?
I’ve always said social media does not win elections. You have about 176,000 polling units, and probably you have seen 300 polling units and then you rush to the conclusion that so-and-so has won.
Election outcomes are not predicted this way.
You remember that when they went to the tribunal, did anybody tender any result from Rivers to say, ‘look, this is the result, we won’?
We felt that Atiku was more of a factor in that election than Obi. So our strategy was that, make sure that you vote for Obi to win in order to deny Atiku the votes.
South-South was purely a PDP state and so if we had voted for PDP all through, then Atiku would have won. That was a threat.
Obi wasn’t a threat. Obi was merely a threat by social media. Even if Obi had secured Rivers outright, it would not have altered the outcome of the presidential race.
Assuming Obi won Rivers, add it for him. Would he have won the election?
When you talk about rigging, you cannot rig an election where you are not popular. You cannot. If you try that, then you see what will happen to you. People will resist it.
We had our strategy, and that strategy worked well for us.
Our major opponent was Atiku Abubakar and if we didn’t do that, something would have happened.”
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