FIJ
Festus Keyamo, the Minister of State for Labour and spokesperson of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu campaign team, led some members of the ruling All progressives Congress (APC) and supporters of the president-elect in a media conference in Washington, United States, on Wednesday.
The media conference, FIJ understands, was an attempt to address some controversies around Tinubu’s emergence as Nigeria’s next president following the February 25 presidential election.
Here is the full text:
TEXT OF THE PARLEY HELD WITH THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON D.C, UNITED STATES ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12TH, 2023 BY REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PRESIDENT-ELECT, SENATOR BOLA AHMED TINUBU – MR. FESTUS KEYAMO, SAN (CHIEF SPOKESPERSON AND MINISTER OF STATE, LABOUR); MR. SUNDAY DARE (MINISTER OF YOUTH AND SPORTS); MR. AJURI NGELALE (ASST. PRINCIPAL SPOKESPERSON).
PROTOCOLS
INTRODUCTION
(1) It is our pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the National Press Center in Washington D.C for this interactive session on Nigeria’s Presidential Election, 2023. We do not intend to make this a long-winding and boring session, so we shall go straight to the points we intend to make to clear some of the fallacies that have been peddled around the world by the sore losers at the said election.
PREPARATION FOR THE ELECTIONS: A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
(2) The country’s out-going President, Muhammadu Buhari, signed into law a Bill that seeks to improve our electoral process by introducing technology as a means of accrediting voters at the polling units. This is known as the ELECTORAL ACT, 2022. The opposition and international observers hailed him on this.
(3) There was also complete non-interference in the political process by State institutions. There were no reports of deployment of security agents or State apparati in support of the candidate of the ruling party. In fact, in some instances, the opposition celebrated the fact that our candidate had no support of the Government. These led to well-published reports (albeit false) that the President was not in support of the candidate of his own party.
