Atiku Abubakar
According to a report by Punch Metro, the Peoples Democratic Party
and its presidential candidate in the 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku
Abubakar, have filed their final written addresses in which they
explained how they were allegedly robbed of victory in the February 23,
2019 presidential election through wrongful computation in 11 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.
They stated this 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.
They claimed 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, was not challenged by the
respondents to their petition.
The petitioners said, “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.”
The petitioners also contended that there were “polling units where
Forms EC8A were altered or tampered with to reflect new votes/scores.”
They added that on Forms EC8B (ward result sheets), the similar errors
were also observed, adding that there were discrepancies in the collated
figures on Forms EC8A and the Forms EC8B.
They stated, “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:
“Election 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.”
Atiku and his party had by their petition urged the five-man
tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba to declare them the winner of the
February 23, 2019 poll or nullify Buhari’s election.
In their final address filed in response to Buhari’s, the petitioners
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 respondents had earlier, through their lawyers, filed their respective final addresses.
The tribunal had fixed August 21 for adoption of the final addresses by the parties.