Roman Ugwu and Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

Presidential hope of Atiku Abubukar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been dashed as the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, hauled over  four million votes in Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and Borno states to widen the gap and maintain a comfortable lead.

Buhari scored 1,464,768; 1,232,133 and 993,445 votes in Kano, Katsina and Kaduna as against 391,593, 308,056 and 649, 612 respectively polled by Atiku.

The APC increased the tally in Borno, Kebbi and Zamfara states with 836, 496; 581,552 and 438,682 while PDP got 71, 780; 154,282 and 125,423 votes respectively.

Buhari also polled 612,371; 794,738 and 580,825 in Niger, Jigawa and Lagos while the PDP candidate got 218,052; 289,895 and 448,015 respectively.

But in Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Rivers states, Atiku defeated Buhari  by 295,737 to 117, 302;  395,832 to 175,429; 594,068 to 221,292 and 473,971 to 150,710 votes respectively, while Bayelsa State gave Atiku 197,933 and Buhari 118,821.

The PDP candidate also won in Adamawa, Anambra, Oyo, Plateau, Benue, Edo and Imo with 275,691 to beat Buhari with 267,842; 356,817 in Benue as against 347,668, while in Imo, PDP got 334,923 to better APC’s  140,463.

Adamawa, Oyo, Anambra and Plateau gave PDP 410,266; 366,690; 524,735 and 548,665 as against  378,078; 365,229; 33,298 and 468,555 respectively polled by Buhari.

Announcing the scores for Niger State, the state collation officer, Angela Freeman-Miri, who is also the Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Lokoja, said a total of 912,964 voters were accredited for the election. She added that 45,039 votes were voided, while results in 105 polling units with 71, 237 registered voters were cancelled.

“We had reported cases of poling units affected across the state. Some of the card readers could not function because of network. There were pockets of violence” she said.

In Jigawa and Sokoto, Buhari won with  794, 738 and 496,333 against 289, 895 and 361,604 scored by Atiku respectively.

In Ogun, Buhari polled 281,762 votes while Atiku trailed with 194,655.

In Oyo State, Atiku narrowly defeated President Buhari with 366,690 votes against 365,229 votes polled by the latter.

At the end of collation last night,  Buhari posted a total 15,191,647 while Atiku got 11,264,977.

A  further breakdown showed that Buhari clearly won in 19 states  and scored 25 per cent in at least 11 states and the FCT while Atiku led in 11 states and the FCT.

Meanwhile, the PDP has petitioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the discrepancies in the number of declared results and the number of accredited voters, questioning the commission’s failure to project the accredited result along the presented results.

Spokesperson of the PDP presidential campaign council and agent of the PDP at the National Collation Centre, Osita Chidoka, who made the disclosure while making observation, reminded INEC chairman, Prof. Yakubu Mahmood, of his promise to give  details of accreditation captured by the Smart Card Reader.

He specifically queried the declared results from Bauchi state, Borno and Yobe  States, demanding to see the accreditation process that resulted in the numbers announced by the collation officers of those states.

“The issue before us, Mr. chairman, is that we feel strongly about and the national chairman of the PDP has written you a petition. We are worried that the promise you made, the commitment you made and INEC made that as we are doing this collation of results, you will give us the details of accreditation captured by the card reader in the country.

“On Monday, my colleague raised the issue and we thought that when we come back today (Yesterday) as we are listening to the states, we will be seeing the accreditation by the states by the card reader. Mr. Chairman, I like it to be on record that we want to see the accreditation for Bauchi State, for Borno sState and Yobe in particular and of course, for the rest of the country because the number, as we are seeing, seems to me that we live in two countries.

“Why people in the southern part of the country have issues with the SCR, why complaints were all over the place, we seem to have quiet and peaceful elections in places where the people have complained of severe cases of insecurity and harassments by the military and bandits.”

Responding, INEC chairman, reiterated the position of the commission to address the issues and urged the opposition party to forward the petition to the appropriate quarters.