Atiku rejects presidential election results and asks his lawyers to commence legal challenge

FORMER vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has rejected the results of last weekend's elections saying that he will challenge them in court as the polls were marred by irregularities and thus not free and fair.

Yesterday, President Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected for a second term after beating Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the February 23 presidential elections with almost 4m votes. Following the collation of the results from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory by the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec), President Buhari won with 15,084,862 votes, compared with 11,262,978 for Alhaji Abubakar. 

Winning with a margin of 3,821,884 votes, President Buhari also secured a records 25% of the vote in 32 states, only failing to meet the requirement in Rivers, Bayelsa, Anambra and Enugu states. In a massive win for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), President Buhari was victorious in four of Nigeria's six geo-political zones, sweeping to victory in the north west, north central, north east and south west geo-political zones.

In a crushing defeat for Alhaji Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), key marginals like Lagos, Kwara, Kogi, Nasarawa and Ondo all went to the APC. However, Alhaji Abubakar has refused to accept the results, saying he would not call President Buhari to accept defeat because the presidential election was not free and fair.

Alhaji Abubakar said: “I thank the Nigerian people who trooped out in their millions to perform their civic duty this past Saturday. The patriotism of Nigerians is heart-warming and affirms my oft-repeated statement that we are brothers and sisters born from the womb of one mother Nigeria.

“With regards to the presidential elections that took place on February 23, 2019, it is clear that there were manifest and premeditated malpractices in many states which negate the results announced. One obvious red flag is the statistical impossibility of states ravaged by the war on terror generating much higher voter turnouts than peaceful states.

"The suppressed votes in my strongholds are so apparent and amateurish, that I am ashamed as a Nigerian that such could be allowed to happen. How can total votes in Akwa Ibom, for instance, be 50% less than what they were in 2015?

"Another glaring anomaly is the disruption of voting in strongholds of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos, Akwa-Ibom, Rivers and diverse other states, with the authorities doing little or nothing and in some cases facilitating these unfortunate situations. The militarization of the electoral process is a disservice to our democracy and a throwback to the jackboot era of military dictatorship.

"In some areas of the country, such as, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Imo states, troops deployed for the elections turned their guns on the very citizens they were meant to protect. This is condemnable and should not be associated with our electoral process in the future.

“I am a democrat and there are democratic avenues available to present the truth to the nation and the watching world. Already, many international observers have given their verdicts, which corroborate our observations and I am sure more will come in the coming hours and days.

“If I had lost in a free and fair election, I would have called the victor within seconds of my being aware of his victory to offer not just my congratulations but my services to help unite Nigeria by being a bridge between the north and the south. However, in my democratic struggles for the past three decades, I have never seen our democracy so debased as it was on Saturday, February 23, 2019.

“Consequently, I hereby reject the result of the February 23, 2019 sham election and will be challenging it in court. I want to assure my supporters and the entire Nigerian people that together, we will not allow democracy to be emasculated.”