Due to their incorrect pre-election mindset, many foreign commentators were taken aback by the outcome of the 2023 Nigerian presidential election, according to the Federal Government.

This information was revealed by Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture, in London when he met with a number of global media outlets and think tanks.

Mohammed is in London to refute some popular misconceptions about the elections and to defend the validity of the 2023 presidential election.

He claimed that some commentators had the wrong mentality and believed that the Labour Party (LP) and Peter Obi, the party's presidential flagbearer, would win the election.

“In the course of my interactions, particularly with the Economist, I referred them to an earlier article they wrote, in which they rated the Labour Party presidential candidate as the front-runner in the polls,” Mohammed said.

“I explained to them that there was no way a presidential candidate who has no political spread and a grassroots base could win an election in Nigeria.

“For instance, not only that the candidate must have the plurality of votes, he must also have one-quarter of the total vote cast in at least twenty-five states of the federation."

“When you look at the results, only the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress and the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, met these requirements,” he added.

“Obi came far behind with 25 percent in fifteen states. This means that Obi, who was wrongly adjudged as a front-runner in the election, was virtually unknown and unpopular in twenty-two states,” he said.

Tinubu, a former Lagos State governor, is expected to be sworn in as Nigeria’s next president on May 29.