BEFORE the presidential election tribunal on Tuesday, the Katsina state chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Salisu Maijigiri, testified that Atiku Abubakar, his party presidential candidate, polled the highest in Katsina.
Maijigiri said the results collated by the PDP in the state showed that Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress who has since May 29 sworn in as the president, had 872,000 votes in Katsina.
This is in contrary to the result announced by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) where APC polled a total of 1,232,133. PDP, according to INEC, got 308,056 total votes. Thus, Buhari won in his state of origin after giving Atiku a difference of 924,077.
Atiku and the PDP have petitioned the tribunal on the result of the 2019 election, stating simply that Atiku won the 2019 presidential election held on February 23. The PDP had supported the claim with a result alleged to have gotten from the electoral commission electronic server.
At the presentation of the case today before the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba on Tuesday, the eighth witness who was Maijigiri said he served as the party’s collation agent in Katsina state for the presidential election. And he said the PDP won in the state after it secured a total of 905,000 votes, while APC had 872 thousand votes.
“We ( the PDP) are the one who won the election, not the APC,” Maijigiri said. “The APC scored 872,000 and PDP scored, 905,000.
“These are our own results we collated in our state not the ones from the server.”
According to INEC in February while announcing Katsina state result, the total number of accredited voters in the state are 1,628,865, while the total number of votes cast equals to 1,619,185. The total valid votes were 1,555,473: Buhari had 1,232,133 votes, Atiku got 308,056 votes. A total of 63, 712 votes were rejected.
When the Kastina result was announced by INEC in February, the PDP had rejected the result. The party alleged that there were some election irregularities committed in some local government areas of the state during the election such as uncustomised result sheets used to enter results.