My statement on INEC’s uploading of results twisted – Lai Mohammed

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has refuted an online report credited to him that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deliberately withheld the real-time upload of presidential election results from polling units.

Making clarification on Wednesday, in Washington DC, while reacting to the report published on some online platforms, Mohammed said it was “irresponsible and reckless” to deliberately twist his statement.

Mohammed said his statement was unambiguous and it was wrong for any media platform to have twisted it, to serve its own interest.

His words: “This is irresponsible and reckless journalism. The truth of the matter is that one of the major problems in the polity today is a section of the media.

“These are people who cannot just believe that the Labour Party or the opposition did not win the election.

“They convinced themselves that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will lose the election. As a result of this, there is nothing you want to say or do, they will find a way to twist it and make it what they want it to look like.

“What I said was that, during the election, there was a technical glitch and as a result of this and for INEC to protect the data, it suspended uploading of the results.

“INEC immediately set up a technical team to look into what went wrong and simultaneously floated another platform.

“Of course, Premium Times has its agenda. They inserted the word “deliberately” and omitted the phrase that it was in order to protect the sanctity of the data.

“They make it look like INEC deliberately refused to upload the results.”

Credit: The Will