The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has shared why PDP Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar failed to win the February presidential election.
The electoral body disclosed this before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja.
INEC said they are satisfied that Atiku failed to secure the majority of lawful votes during the polls, even if they denied accusations that votes were illegally awarded to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC to make sure Buhari was victorious.
INEC added that if Atiku believes that they handed unlawful votes to Buhari in certain states, then he must be ready to prove it.
Their recent statement read, “We refer to the relevant paragraphs of the petition where the petitioners made the sundry allegations of deliberate wrong entry/falsification of election results by the 1st Respondent.
“Clearly, it can be gleaned that nothing concrete or specific has been offered by the Petitioners in this regard. “For example, the petitioners pleaded wrong and deliberate entry of wrong results by the 1st Respondent in 11 states of the country, namely: Borno, Yobe, Bahchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger and Zamfara States.
“Thereafter, the petitioners proceeded to break down this allegation State by State.
“However, a cursory appraisal of paragraph 155(4) of the petition dealing with this allegation of ‘posting wrong results’ to the non-existent 1st Respondent’s server and not the wrongful entry of the results in the physical /manual Form EC8 series.
“The most astonishing part is that the petitioners failed to call witnesses who were at the various Units to observe these various alleged anomalies.
“We submit that allegations bordering on alleged wrong entry/falsification of election result are criminal in nature and must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
“Furthermore, by virtue of section 150(1) of the Evidence Act, the results declared by the 1st Respondent enjoy a presumption of regularity. Accordingly, the petitioners herein are duty bound to rebut this presumption with credible evidence”.
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