By Daniel Kanu (Assistant Politics Editor)
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared President Muhammadu Buhari winner of last Saturday’s presidential election.
Announcing the result, Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 15,191,847 votes to defeat former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his closest rival who recorded 11,262,978 to lose the election with a margin of 3,928,869.
Buhari according to INEC won 19 states, while Atiku was victorious in 17 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja.
The PDP has refused to accept the result, citing massive irregularities particularly large scale manipulation of figures.
Yakubu announced that a Certificate of Return will be presented to Buhari and the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the International Conference Center, Abuja at 2.00 pm today.
Meanwhile, the PDP said it would explore every option, including the legal process to ventilate its grievances on the declaration of President Buhari as the winner of the 2019 election.
The party which refused to sign the result sheet said the announcement of Buhari as winner was an abnormality.
But in his response, Prof. Yakubu said that the difference in the valid votes and cancellation were insignificant to impact on the general outcome of the election.
According to him, all the observations raised by the PDP would be needed for the future, including the 2023 elections.
While rejecting the declaration of Buhari, an agent of the PDP and former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, told journalists in Abuja at the National Collation Centre that the results that were announced did not represent the valid votes of Nigerians.
He said, “The PDP does not accept the result as representing the valid votes of Nigerians. We have made three issues: first, after all the investment in technology, we expected that INEC, after spending N27 billion in this year’s budget alone for technology, would have for the purpose of transparency, not just for law, projected to us the result of what the card reader that they used displayed about the people that went through the card reader verification. That singular act has put a dent on the image of the election.
“The second one is the issue we raised about the number of registered vis-à-vis what the chairman now calls collated voters, which 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 believed that the difference between the accredited voters and the votes cast which came to about 750,000 is an issue to be looked at.
Finally, we believed that the cancellations that took place in the election impacting 2.7 million voters required to be looked into seriously.
“So, in our view, this election required to be reviewed, looked at again and possibly, we have a rerun. More importantly, we think that INEC should have looked consciously to 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’s 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 for the violence. The issues that have arisen in this election, and lack of transparency that we saw in the election did not increase, neither did it improve the belief of Nigerians in the electoral process.
“However, the PDP remains a very lawful party, we believe in the law, we believe in the constitution of Nigeria, we are committed democrats. The PDP is a party that entrenched democracy in Nigeria, the PDP is the party that made it possible for Nigeria to enjoy the fruit 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.”
In the same vein, Atiku Abubakar rejected the result, insisting that the election was not free and fair. He said it was rather full of many irregularities.
The former Vice President, therefore, said that he would challenge the outcome in court.
Atiku, in a statement he personally signed early Wednesday morning, said if he had lost in a free and fair election, he would have called the winner, President Muhammadu Buhari within seconds of his being aware of the outcome of the exercise.
He said, “If I had lost in a free and fair election, I would have called the victor within seconds of my being aware of his victory to offer not just my congratulations, but my services to help unite Nigeria by being a bridge between the North and the South.
“However, in my democratic struggles for the past three decades, I have never seen our democracy so debased as it was on Saturday, February 23, 2019.
2007 was a challenge, but President Yar’Adua was remorseful. In 2019, it is sad to see those who trampled on democracy thumping their noses down on the Nigerian people.
“Consequently, I hereby reject the result of the February 23, 2019 sham election and will be challenging it in court.”