The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says  Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), did not meet the constitutional requirement to be declared winner of the February 25 presidential election.

Bola Tinubu, the standard bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the presidential poll with 8,794,726 votes.

Atiku polled 6,984,520, votes and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) came third with 6,101,533.

Challenging Tinubu’s victory in the petition marked CA/PEPC/05/2023, Atiku and the PDP claimed that Tinubu was not qualified to contest the election.

 “The 2nd respondent (Tinubu) was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast at the election,” the petition reads.

“The 2nd respondent was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the election.”

The PDP candidate wants the tribunal to nullify Tinubu’s victory and withdraw the certificate of return issued to him.

INEC submitted that the APC candidate met all the legal requirements to be so announced as the winner of the election, adding that a candidate must not secure 25 per cent votes in the FCT to be declared winner because the FCT was not accorded any special status in the constitution as being “erroneously” portrayed by some political parties and candidates who lost the election.

“Having scored at least one-quarter of the valid votes cast in 29 states, which is over and above the 2/3 states threshold required by the constitution, in addition to scoring the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election, the second respondent was properly declared the winner and returned as the president-elect of the federal republic of Nigeria,” the commission stated.