TheCable

President Muhammadu Buhari  says he expected Atiku Abubakar to go to court after the results of the 2019 presidential election were announced. 

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Buhari the winner of the February 23 poll.

Buhari and his wife, Aisha, voted on Saturday at the Kofar Baru 003 polling unit, Daura, Katsina state, in the governorship and state assembly elections.

Asked to react to the decision by the PDP to challenge the outcome of the presidential election, Buhari replied: “I expected that to happen.”

Atiku had said he was going to court to challenge the outcome because of malpractices.

He said: “One obvious red flag is the statistical impossibility of states ravaged by the war on terror generating much higher voter turnouts than peaceful states. The suppressed votes in my strongholds are so apparent and amateurish, that I am ashamed as a Nigerian that such could be allowed to happen. How can total votes in Akwa Ibom, for instance, be 50% less than what they were in 2015?

“Another glaring anomaly is the disruption of voting in strongholds of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos, Akwa-Ibom, Rivers and diverse other states, with the authorities doing little or nothing and in some cases facilitating these unfortunate situations.

“The militarisation of the electoral process is a disservice to our democracy and a throwback to the jackboot era of military dictatorship.”

Buhari also commented on the tension and violence across the country over Saturday’s elections.

“I will leave it to the law enforcement agencies especially the police because they have been meeting virtually on a 48-hour basis to make sure that they have identified the flashpoints, as you mentioned, wherever they are and make arrangements to counter it,” he said.