Nigeria Election: Opposition leader heads to court

Atiku Abubakar will be heading to the court after disputing Nigeria’s presidential election in which Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been re-elected for a second four-year term.

Mr Abubakar said the election was a “sham” and “will be challenging it in court.”

President Buhari defeated Atiku by a margin of almost four million votes but Mr Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has rejected the result of the election in which the turnout was 35.6%.

Mr Abubakar in a statement released on Wednesday said: “with regards to the Presidential elections that took place on February 23, 2019, it is clear that there were manifest and premeditated malpractices in many states which negate the results announced.”

He also complained about the “militarization of the electoral process” which he said was a “disservice to our democracy and a throwback to the jackboot era of military dictatorship.”

“In some areas of the country, such as Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Imo states, troops deployed for the elections turned their guns on the very citizens they were meant to protect. This is condemnable and should not be associated with our electoral process in the future.”

The election was marred by a week’s delay and violence on the day of the polls.

President Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) won in 19 of the 36 states while the PDP was victorious in 17 states and in the capital, Abuja, according to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral (INEC).

The APC got 15.2 million votes while the PDP received 11.3 million.