9th July, 2019
Katsina state chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Salisu Maijigiri has given a stunning testimony at the Presidential Election Tribunal that opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, beat President Muhammadu Buhari in his home state.
According to Maijigari, Atiku polled the highest votes in Katsina.
Maijigiri said the results collated by the PDP in the state showed that Buhari had 872,000 votes, while Atiku polled 905,000 votes.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had said APC polled a total of 1,232,133 while PDP got 308,056 total votes.
Atiku and the PDP have petitioned the tribunal on the result of the 2019 election, stating that Atiku won. The PDP supported the claim with a result alleged to have emanated from INEC’s server.
At the presentation of the case today before the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba on Tuesday, the eighth witness who was Maijigiri said he served as the party’s collation agent in Katsina state for the presidential election.
“We ( the PDP) are the one who won the election, not the APC,” Maijigiri said.
“These are our own results we collated in our state not the ones from the server.”
On Monday, another witness for Atiku Abubakar alleged that there was no election in his polling unit in Jigawa and that he was compelled to sign the fake result.
Mr Mohammed Tata, who served as an agent of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, told the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja that he was threatened to either sign a copy of the result or have his name removed as a beneficiary in the N-Power scheme.
Answering a question that was posed to him by counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mr Yunus Usman, SAN, the witness said: “I was harassed and intimidated to sign the result sheet under duress. I was told that if I refuse to sign, my name will be removed from the N-Power Program”.
Asked if he was dissatisfied that President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC scored over 700 votes in his polling unit, the witness said: “There was no score because there was no election”.
Continuing he said: “I am a Muslim. I believe in destiny and what God decides will happen. Whether PDP win or the APC, I don’t have a problem with that. All I want is that I need justice in my country.
“I don’t care whether my party won or lost, but I am not happy about what happened.”
Asked how many parties participated in the election in his polling unit, Mr. Tata who testified as the fifth witness for the PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, said: “I don’t know because there was no election”.
Asked if he was given a copy of the result, he said: “No I was not given because there was no peace”.
He said though he “followed due process” by reporting how he was harassed to sign the result, the culprits were neither arrested nor prosecuted.
Asked by APC’s lawyer, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, why he did not not mention names if those that harassed him in his statement on oath, the witness said it was “for security reasons”.
“I am still working with the N-Power because I signed the result. It is because I did what they wanted me to do”, he added.