President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has officially been declared the winner of the 2019 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
President Muhammadu Buhari was declared winner with over 3 million votes ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and others.
The chairman of the INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said that the duty of the commission is to conclude and collate the presidential result for final declaration.
On the problem of accredited voters not adding up to number of voters, Yakubu revealed that the problem affected less than 2% of voters and thus did not affect the general conclusion.
Concerning Yobe and Akwa Ibom, Yakubu said that the numbers add up. In reference to the request of the opening of the commission’s back-end for verification and cross checking of voters, he said that it is not a matter of law. He said the discussion can be continued after the end of the process.
Osita Chidoka representing the PDP said there was a discrepancy of more than 1,600,000 voters in terms of registered voters. He said the cancelled votes affected more than 2 million voters. He claimed there were 5.1 million votes that cannot be accounted for and thus called for a rerun.
In his response, Yakubu said the assertion that 5.1 million voters could not vote because of card readers is not true. He also said when card readers are deliberately circumvented, votes will be cancelled.
The INEC chairman announced that Muhammadu Buhari of the APC scored 15,191,847 votes, while Atiku Abubakar of the PDP scored 11,262,978.
Yakubu said following the collation, he said he now performs his role as returning officer and listed all the names of the presidential candidates and their total votes.
He said Muhammadu Buhari is declared winner of the election and returned elected.
