The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal has dismissed in its entirety the petition of the Peoples Democratic Party and its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar challenging President Muhammadu Buhari‘s re-election.
The tribunal in its over six-hours judgment on Wednesday, held that the petitioners failed to satisfactorily discharge the burden of proof on them.
It therefore held Buhari duly elected in the Feb. 23 presidential election.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared Buhari, who ran on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, as the winner of the February 23 Presidential election.
INEC had said that Buhari polled 15,191,847 votes, to win the election with his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, garnering 11,262,978 votes.
However, Atiku and his party challenged the results, saying that they won with over 1 million votes.
The petitioners claimed that the results from INEC’s server showed that Atiku polled 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari who got 16,741,430 votes.
