ABUJA – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has kicked against the results as announced by the Independent National Electoral (INEC) for the Saturday Presidential election.
The INEC Wednesday morning
declared incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives
Congress APC as Nigeria’s President-elect having polled the highest
number of votes in last Saturday’s Presidential election.
While
Buhari scored 15, 191, 847, his main challenger, former vice president
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP polled 11, 262, 978
votes.
Consequently, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu who is
also the Chief Returning Officer for the Presidential Election said Mr
Buhari would be presented with a Certificate of Return alongside his
vice, Yemi Osinbajo.
Buhari was declared President-elect at about 4:43am in Wednesday.
“I,
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu hereby certify that I was the Returning Officer
for the Presidential Election held on the 23rd day of February, 2019.
That the he action was contested; that the candidates received the
following votes”, he began.
Having announced the scores of the 73
Presidential candidates, Yakubu said; ” That Muhammadu Buhari of the
All Progressives Congress APC having satisfied the requirements if the
law and scored the highest number of votes, is hereby declared winner
and is returned elected”.
Meanwhile, the PDP has kicked
against the results as announced by INEC. Shortly before the
announcement, the PDP Presidential Collation Agent, Osita Chidoka
implored INEC not to make any return but to declare the election
inconclusive in certain parts of the country and order a rerun.
He
said the PDP would explore legal options to reclaim its mandate and
declined to append his signature to the Result Sheet like other agents.
Chidoka
said; “The PDP does not accept this result as representing the valid
votes of Nigerians, we have made three issues; first, after all the
investments in technology, we required INEC, after spending N27 billion
in this year’s budget alone for technology, we had expected that today,
INEC would have for the purpose of transparency not just for law would
have projected to us the results of what the card reader that they used
displayed about the people that went through the card reader
verification, that singular act puts a dent on the credibility of the
election.
“The second one is the issue we raised about the number
of registered vis-à-vis if what the chairman now calls collated voters
means that 1.6 million people are missing in the voter register. We
think that issue is substantial enough to require a resolution.
“We
also believe that the difference between the accredited voters and the
total votes cast which came to about 750,000 votes requires an issue to
be looked at.
Finally, we believe that the cancellations that
took place in the election impacting 2.7 million voters requires to be
looked into seriously.
“So, in our view this election requires to
be looked at again and possibly we would have had a rerun, more
importantly, we think that INEC should have looked consciously on the
use of the card reader, the absence of card reader is a major violation
in the elections, it renders that election null and void, that is what
the chairman promised us.
“So, for us in the PDP, we believe that
this is a new low in Nigeria’s electoral history. Since 2015 we believe
that Nigeria would have been making progress in the election, but
violence in this election, the issues that have arisen in this election,
lack of transparency that we saw in this election did not increase nor
improve the belief of Nigerians in the electoral process.
However,
the PDP remained a very lawful party, we believe in the law, we believe
in the constitution of Nigeria, we are committed democrats, PDP is a
party that entrenched democracy in Nigeria, the PDP is the party that
made it possible for Nigeria to enjoy the fruits and dividends of
democracy.
We will continue to support democracy in Nigeria, we
will continue to promote democracy in Nigeria but we have a good message
for Nigerians, we want them to remain peaceful, we will explore all our
options, including the belief that the legal process in Nigeria is one
of the ways to resolve issues”, said Chidoka.
His views were
countered by Festus Keyamo, an agent of the APC who hailed the election
and said the ruling party would also be filing petitions regarding
results declared in some Southern states.
While Messrs Buhari and
Atiku jointly scored a total of 26, 454, 825, the 71 other Presidential
candidates jointly polled 869, 758.
The Total Valid Votes cast
was given as 27, 324, 583, Total Rejected Votes stood at 1, 289, 607 and
Total Votes Cast stood at 28, 614, 190.
On the level of voter turn out, the INEC boss placed the national average at 35.66 percent.
He
said the commission would in days to come critically study the issues
raised by the PDP and other parties regarding what they described as
discrepancies in figures.
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