Breaking: INEC officially declares President Buhari winner of 2019 election
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has officially declared President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the 2019 presidential election, defeating Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with over three million votes.
The chairman of the INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said that the duty of the commission is to conclude and collate the presidential result for final declaration.
READ ALSO: 2019 presidential election: How Buhari, Atiku stand in 36 states, FCT according to INEC's official results (with infographics)
On the problem of accredited voters not adding up to number of voters, Yakubu revealed that the problem affected less than 2% of voters and thus did not affect the general conclusion.
Concerning Yobe and Akwa Ibom, Yakubu said that the numbers add up. In reference to the request of the opening of the commission’s back-end for verification and cross checking of voters, he said that it is not a matter of law. He said the discussion can be continued after the end of the process.
Source: Original
Osita Chidoka representing the PDP said there was a discrepancy of more than 1,600,000 voters in terms of registered voters.
He said the cancelled votes affected more than 2 million voters. He claimed there were 5.1 million votes that cannot be accounted for and thus called for a rerun.
Source: Original
In his response, Yakubu said the assertion that 5.1 million voters could not vote because of card readers is not true. He also said when card readers are deliberately circumvented, votes will be cancelled.
He said constitutionally, he has two roles. Firstly, as a the chief commissioner of the election, he will announce the national collation of results.
Secondly, as the returning officer for the presidential election, he will make an official declaration of the winner of the election.
Source: Original
The INEC chairman announced that Muhammadu Buhari of the APC scored 15,191,847 votes, while Atiku Abubakar of the PDP scored 11,262,978.
Total valid votes - 27,324,583
Rejected votes 1,289,607
Total votes cast - 28,614,190
Yakubu said following the collation, he said he now performs his role as returning officer and listed all the names of the presidential candidates and their total votes.
Source: Original
He said Muhammadu Buhari is declared winner of the election and returned elected.
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Meanwhile, presidents of Ghana, Niger and Senegal have called President Buhari to congratulate him on his re-election. The presidents said his re-election was a demonstration of the confidence Nigerians had in him.
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