The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in Katsina State, Sailisu Maijigiri, told the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja, on Tuesday, that his party defeated President Muhammadu Buhari in the February 23, 2019 presidential election in the state.
The figures he however gave failed to tally with those his party and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, alluded to in their petition as the “true results” they obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s server.
Maijigiri appeared before the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba, at the instance of the PDP and Atiku, who are by their petition challenging the victory of Buhari and his All Progressives Congress at the poll.
The petitioners, on Tuesday, presented 13 witnesses, in addition to the six they earlier called on Monday.
Testifying as the eighth petitioners’ witness, Maijigiri who served as the party’s collation agent for the presidential election in Katsina State, said the collation of the results of the poll carried out by his party in the state, showed that his party polled 905,000 to defeat Buhari and the APC whom he said scored 872,000 votes.
He said, “We (the PDP) won the election in Katsina State not the APC. The APC scored 872,000 and the PDP scored, 905,000.”
But the respondents’ lawyers pointed his attention to the claim by the petitioners in their petition conceding defeat to Buhari.
Asked if he was aware that the petitioners, according to the results they claimed to have obtained from INEC’s server, stated that in their petition that they polled 160,203 votes while Buhari scored 155,633 votes, he said, “The figures we have are the results that we collated in our state, and not the ones from the server.”
In the results officially declared by INEC, Buhari won his home state of Katsina with 1,232,133 to defeat Atiku who polled 308,056 votes.
Another agent of the PDP in Katsina State for the presidential election, Dan Abdusallam, who testified as the 10th petitioners’ witness at the tribunal , was also asked if he was aware that the petitioners conceded defeat to Buhari in Katsina State, he said, “It will never happen that Atiku would concede defeat to Buhari in Katsina.”
In his testimony, he alleged that the election was marred by over-voting in some polling units as the total votes cast outnumbered the number of accredited voters.
Two ad hoc electoral officers who served during the election also told the tribunal that they electronically transmitted results of the election into the INEC server.
Challenging the victory of Buhari and the APC at the poll, the petitioners had claimed in their petition that the true and actual results of the election electronically transmitted into INEC’s server showed that they defeated Buhari in the election.
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