Declare us winner of presidential poll – Atiku, PDP urge Tribunal, say 11 states’ results manipulated against them

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in the 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, have urged the five-man Presidential Election Petition Tribunal panel led by Justice Mohammed Garba to declare them winner of the February 23 presidential polls.

Atiku and PDP who filed their final written addresses, explained how they were allegedly robbed of victory through wrongful computation of results in eleven states.

The states, according to them, are Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Yobe, and Zamfara.

The petitioners stated through their lawyer, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), that a correct computation of the results would give them a margin of lead of 222,332 votes over President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress.

This, they stated in their response to Buhari’s final address, contending that the correct computation showed that they scored 9,426,082 votes against Buhari’s 9,203,750.

The petitioners argued that reports tendered by a statistician, who was called as one of their witnesses pointing out faults in the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was not challenged by the respondents to their petition.

“These reports (P90-K) are unchallenged and remained so as none of the respondents controverted the detailed analysis of unlawful votes extracted from Exhibits PNG1 – PNG3464, PYB1731, PKT1 PKT3377; PKB1 – PKB2105; PB01 – PB03471; PJG1 – PJG 3161; PGB1 – PGB 1911; PBC1 – PBC3598; PKD1 – PKD3334; PKN1 – PKN7159 and PZF1 – PZF 1000 as summarised hereunder,” they said.

They argued further that there were “polling units where Forms EC8A were altered or tampered with to reflect new votes/scores.”

They noted that on Forms EC8B similar errors were also observed, noting that there were discrepancies in the collated figures on Forms EC8A and the Forms EC8B.

“It is submitted that when the votes credited to the parties on account of various errors listed in paragraph 4.54(a) – (f) and (a) – (d), respectively, above are deducted from the results declared in the 11 focal states, the under listed figures now represent the overall lawful votes cast in the presidential election held on February 23, 2019 across Nigeria:

“Elect on result: PDP – 11, 262,978; APC – 15,191,847. Void votes: PDP – 1,836,896; APC -5,988,097. New result: PDP – 9,426,082; APC -9,203,750.”

In their final address filed in response to Buhari, Atiku and PDP raised five issues for determination, including that Buhari was neither duly elected by the majority of lawful votes nor qualified to contest as of the time of the election.

The tribunal had fixed August 21 for adoption of the final addresses by the parties.