The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has explained why he is asking the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to nullify the February 25, presidential election and order a run-off or he be declared winner.
In a petition filed by his lawyers led by Joe-Kyari Gadzama (SAN) on March 21, Atiku contended that he scored the majority of lawful votes cast in the presidential election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the federation and the FCT.
Atiku polled 6,984,520 to place second behind APC’s Bola Tinubu who polled 8,794,726, while Peter Obi of Labour Party got 6,101,533 to come third.
The lawyers contend that the return of the APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, was hasty, premature and wrongful as the margin of lead between him and the declared winner, which is 1,810,206, is lower than that of the number of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) collected in the polling units where elections were cancelled and did not hold across the country.
They aver that INEC officials failed to fill the proper booklets forms and to rely on BVAS for accreditation and transmission of results from many polling units and states, adding that the results of the polls are liable to be voided in many states where violence was unleashed on voters such as Kogi, Rivers, Lagos and Kano which depleted their votes.
They also aver that the APC failed to secure 25 per cent of the total votes cast in the FCT “as mandatorily required” in Section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having scored 90,902 votes, which is 18.99 per cent, and therefore ought not to have been declared duly elected.