LEADERS of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have held a protest at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters at Maitama, Abuja, over the result of the February 23 presidential election.

President Muhammadu Buhari was declared the winner of the 2019 presidential election, defeating Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.  But Atiku and the APC leaders have rejected the result, claiming the poll’ result was massively rigged by the APC.

The protest was led by Uche Secondus, the PDP national chairman around 3 pm on Tuesday evening to the Commission’s office.

Thousands of party supporters, with the leaders, were chanting solidarity songs in front of the office, in the presence of armed security officers.

Subsequently, in a protest letter which was made available on the official twitter handle of the PDP written to the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakub, Secondus said there were cases of infractions and deliberate violations of the electoral law and guidelines in the just concluded election.

The PDP said in the statement that  the smart card readers (SCR) machines were enforced strategically in the “South-south, South-east and North Central zones of the country which are essentially PDP strongholds.”

The party said the commission had “hurriedly announced the results of the election” despite the cancellation of votes from several polling units across the country.

In the statement, the party claimed that the Commission had included in the electoral guidelines to use an electronic collation system (e-collation) for the results from the polling units through the ward centres to the national collation centre in Abuja, but was neglected.

President Muhammadu Buhari was declared the winner of the polls having secured a total of 15,191,847 votes, representing over 56 per cent of the entire votes cast. Buhari won in 19 out of the 36 states of the federation and also got the required 25 per cent of votes in two-thirds of all states.

On the other hand, Atiku won in 17 states and the FCT, polling a total of 11,262, 978 votes or just over 42 per cent of the total votes.

While president Buhari had received a certificate of return from INEC on February 27, Atiku said he would challenge the poll result in the court.