Politics

Presidential election: PDP kicks, refuses to sign result sheet

Published

6 years ago

February 27, 2019

The Peoples Democratic Party has said it would explore every option , including the legal process to ventilate its grievances on the declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the 2019 election .
The party which refused to sign the result sheet said the announcement of Buhari who sought re- election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress by the Independent National Electoral Commission was an abnormality .

THE PUNCH reported that Buhari was declared winner by INEC having scored 15 , 191, 847 votes to defeat his closest rival , Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party who polled 11 , 262, 978 votes .

But in his response , the chairman of INEC , Prof . Mahmood Yakubu said that the difference in the valid votes and cancellation were insignificant to impact on the general outcome of the election .

According to him , all the observations raised by the PDP would be needed for the future , including the 2023 elections .

While rejecting the declaration of Buhari , an agent of the PDP and former Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps , Osita Chidoka, told journalists in Abuja at the National Collation Centre on Wednesday morning that the results that were announced do not represent the valid votes of Nigerians.

He said , “ The PDP does not accept the result as representing the valid votes of Nigerians. We have made three issues: first, after all the investment in technology , we expected that INEC , after spending N 27 billion in this year ’ s budget alone for technology , would have for the purpose of transparency, not just for law , 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 has put a dent on the image of the election .

“ The second one is the issue we raised about the number of registered vis – à – vis what the chairman now calls collated voters , which means that 1 . 6 million people are missing in the voter 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 is an issue to be looked at .

Finally , we believed that the cancellations that took place in the election impacting 2 . 7 million voters required to be looked into seriously.

“ So, in our view , this election required to be reviewed, looked at again and possibly, we have a 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 for the violence . The issues that have arisen in this election , and lack of transparency that we saw in the election did not increase, neither did it improve the belief of Nigerians in the electoral process .

“ However , the PDP remains a very lawful party , we believe in the law , we believe in the constitution of Nigeria, we are committed democrats. The 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 dividends 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 belief that the legal process in Nigeria is one of the ways to resolve issues . ”