Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has been declared winner in Saturday’s presidential election, with a total of 288,679 votes.
Atiku narrowly defeated the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who scored a total number of 285,444 votes, while candidates of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and New Nigerian Peoples Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, came third and fourth with a total of 6,568 and 1,300 votes respectively.
Prof. Kabiru Bala, the returning officer for the Presidential election in the state and the Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, after announcing the results at exactly 2:38 am on Tuesday, invited party representatives to sign the results.
Reacting to the results, Yusuf Suleiman, the Director General of the PDP campaign committee, called on INEC to look into the issue of more than 400 polling units cancelled in the state, saying about 300,000 voters in the state have been disenfranchised and that their votes could go for either of the political parties including APC, PDP, LP or even the NNPP.
Also reacting, the Director General of the APC presidential campaign council, Maigari Dingyadi, who is also Minister for Police Affairs, stated that politicians should not quote figures without recourse to INEC, while urging the INEC to look into the circumstances that led to the cancellation of the results.
However, the returning officer disclosed that a total number of 133 registration areas were affected with 471 polling units in the cancellation, adding that the affected areas also include 301,499 registered voters with 254,902 Permanent Voter Cards collected.
