The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says its candidate in the just concluded presidential election in Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar defeated incumbent president and candidate of the All Progressives Party (APC), Muhammadu Buhari by 1.6 million votes.

This was contained in a petition filed on Monday by Atiku Abubakar  and the PDP to challenge the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC in the February 23 polls.

The petition, which sought to rely on 50 sets of documents was filed before the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Buhari and the APC as the first, second and third respondents respectively.

INEC had on February 27, 2019 declared President Buhari the winner of the election having polled 15,191,847 votes to defeat Atiku, whom it said garnered 11,262,978 votes.

However, the petitioners stated in their 139-page petition that ‘from the data in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server, the true, actual and correct results from state to state computation showed that Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.

They said the results were the total votes scored by the candidates in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja as there was no report on the sever about the results from Rivers State as of February 25, 2019.

One of the five grounds of the petition also tends to resuscitate the allegation that Buhari was not qualified to run for the office of  President on the grounds that he did not possess the constitutional minimum qualification of a school certificate.