President Muhammadu Buhari has been declared the winner of the 2019 presidential election.
The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate polled 15,191,847 to defeat his main rival and Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who scored a total votes of 11,262,978.
However, the former Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka who declined to append his signature on the result sheet unlike his APC counterpart, Hameed Ali said the result as pronounced by the INEC chairman did not reflect the genuine votes of Nigerians. He said the main opposition party would challenge the result announced by the electoral umpire in Court.
He said:”The PDP does not accept this result as representing the valid votes of Nigerians.
We have raised three issues: first after all the investment 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 result of what the card reader that they used displayed about the people that went through the card reader verification, that singular act put a dent on the credibility of the election.
“The second one is the issues we raised about the number of registered voters, vis-à-vis what the chairman now called collated voters. It means that 1.6 million people are missing in the voter’s 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 votes requires an issue to be looked at.
“Finally, we believed that the cancellations that took place in the election impacting 2.7 million voters required be looked into seriously.
“So, in our view this election required too be looked at again and possibly we would have had 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 violence in this election, the issues that have arisen in this election, lack of transparency that we saw in this election did not increase, neither did it improve the believe of Nigerians in the electoral process.
“However, the PDP remain 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 fruit and dividend 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 believe that the legal process in Nigeria is one of the way to resolve issues.”
Also speaking with newsmen, the spokesman of the APC presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo dismissed the PDP as bad losers but assured them that his party would be magnanimous in victory.
“We want to be magnanimous in victory, but at the same time they should be magnanimous to congratulate those who have won.
“The pattern of voting was similar to 2015.The masses should be happy that Buhari is his own man, he doesn’t have to kowtow to any power bloc to serve Nigerians.
“He remains committed to his blueprint for Nigerians: he has promised that he will continue to fight corruption, grow the economy and tackle insurgency.”
