ABUJA — The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has rejected claims that he rigged the 2023 presidential election in the South-South for President Bola Tinubu. He insists the outcome came from political strategy, not vote manipulation.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, Wike dismissed the accusation as a social media-driven falsehood. It followed his appearance on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout, where he said the G5 bloc of aggrieved PDP governors deliberately let Labour Party candidate Peter Obi win parts of the region. Critics and opposition figures called the remark an admission of electoral fraud.
Wike said the claim makes no sense. He questioned how one person could alter results across thousands of polling units and mocked the idea that he simply wrote up result sheets and handed them to INEC. He also noted that, with roughly 176,000 polling units nationwide, online tallies from a few hundred units say little about the real outcome. He added that no petitioner at the election tribunal produced Rivers State results to show a different winner.
The minister said the South-South, historically a PDP stronghold, would have gone to PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar had the party’s votes stayed intact. The G5 saw Atiku as the biggest danger to its interests, so it steered support toward Obi to split the opposition and cut Atiku’s margin.
Wike played down Obi’s national strength, calling him a threat mainly online. He argued that even a clean sweep of Rivers would not have won Obi the presidency. He also said rigging is impossible without real grassroots support, because voters would resist it.
He urged analysts and the public to focus on verified facts and electoral mechanics rather than online commentary, saying the G5’s strategy “worked well” and that Atiku remained their main opponent.
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