Overconfidence made you lose 2023 election – Lai Mohammed tells PDP, LP

On Sunday, April 30, 2023, Mohammed stated that President Muhammadu Buhari's analysis of the reasons for the opposition's loss was incontrovertible and that the opposition's overconfidence and complacency caused their defeat.

According to Mohammed, President Buhari delivered a free, fair, and credible election that would go down in history as the best in Nigeria's history.

"President Muhammadu Buhari lived up to his billing by delivering a free, fair and credible election, and his legacy is assured. The President would rather lose his state and many of his party’s strongholds than tamper with the fidelity of the election, and that is why he provided a level playing field for all parties,” Mohammed said.

Mohammed claimed that the opposition's overconfidence before the election stemmed from the blitzkrieg of social media propaganda and procured opinion polls, which misled their foreign backers and a section of the international media into uncritically reporting that they were coasting home to victory when they were, in fact, heading towards defeat.

The Minister stated that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the election fairly, clinching the majority of the votes cast and surpassing the constitutionally-stipulated 25% of votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

President Muhammadu Buhari has said the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) lost the February 25, 2023 presidential election because of overconfidence.

He said while the APC was working hard to retain power in the election, the combined opposition was carried away by self-confidence.