Atiku won Buhari’s home state – PDP tells tribunal

People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Tuesday told the Presidential Election Tribunal that its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, defeated President Muhammadu Buhari, in his home state, Katsina State.

Salisu Maijigiri, who is the PDP’s state chairman in Katsina and was the party’s collation agent in the state, said the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission were untrue.

“We (PDP) are the one who won the election, not APC. APC scored 872,000 and PDP scored, 905,000,” Maijigiri told the tribunal.

“These are our own results, we collated in our state not the ones from the server,” he added.

The electoral body had declared that Buhari polled 1,232,133 votes to beat his closest challenger Abubakar who had 308,056 votes.

The difference between both candidates was of 924,077 votes with Buhari winning in all the 34 local government areas in the state.

Abubakar and his party, have their petition challenging the victory of Buhari and the All Progressives Congress at the poll filed before the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba.

They had tendered the form with a view to establishing their petition against Buhari on his qualification for the last presidential election.

The party also tendered the final result of the election, signed by the INEC chairman, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood. This was admitted as exhibit.

Also tendered and admitted as exhibits were documents containing the total number of voters in INEC’s register and the number of collected permanent voter cards for the election.

Abubakar’s lead counsel, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, equally tendered six newspapers publications and 10 press statements issued by INEC in respect of the election.

So far, about 6,806 election result sheets from Kano and Zamfara States were tendered and admitted by the tribunal in evidence.

Abubakar and the PDP thereafter began calling witnesses on Monday to testify to allegations of election malpractices, corruption, irregularities and violence in the conduct of the election that produced Buhari as president.