No fewer than a dozen people reportedly deployed as electoral officers by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2019 presidential election have admitted under oath that they transmitted results electronically.
The question about whether or not results were forwarded to a central database of the commission has been amongst the leading grounds for which the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, are contesting the presidential election results declared by INEC.
On February 27, the electoral umpire had declared Muhammadu Buhari winner of the February 23 presidential election, and issued him a certificate of return for a second four-year term starting May 29.
Abubakar and the PDP challenged the results at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal last month, stating he won the election and was in possession of evidence that would upturn the declared result.
Abubakar’s legal team submitted a different result to the tribunal, which indicated that the former vice president was the winner of the election.
In his 139-page petition challenging the results at the tribunal, Abubakar said the results from INEC server showed he polled 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari who got 16,741,430 votes.
Abubakar’s lawyers maintained that the results were released by an INEC whistleblower, who had access to the commission’s internal server and other tools throughout the election.
This contradicted the results declared by INEC according to which Buhari received 15,191,847 votes against Abubakar’s 11,262,978 votes.
Abubakar’s lawyers also provided unique identification information of computers reportedly belonging to INEC. They are currently expecting experts from Microsoft, IBM and Oracle to corroborate this claim.
However, in its initial response to Abubakar’s petition, INEC strongly denied operating a server during the election.
They claimed that such activities were not permitted by the electoral law. The commission accused Abubakar of circulating fake results for the purpose of his petition.
Buhari and his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) also sided with the electoral umpire and alleged criminal interception of a public institution’s communication by Abubakar and the PDP.
Responding to INEC’s denial of the existence of the said server and its purported result, Abubakar’s legal team attached affidavits from 12 persons they claimed worked for INEC.
The persons, according to the affidavits, stated that they worked as presiding officers and assistant presiding officers in Borno and Yobe.
They were only identified in the documents by their initials. They are among the witnesses to be called by Abubakar’s legal team.
The witnesses comprise seven presiding officers and five assistant presiding officers. They were six each from Borno and Yobe. They swore that they were adequately recruited and trained by the commission ahead of the election.
“We were specifically instructed that the use of the smart card reader for accreditation, verification, authentication, collation and transmission of results is mandatory and that any election conducted without the use of the smart card reader would be invalid,” one of the witnesses stated on oath.
“I took part in the conduct of the Presidential and National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) elections…where I served as the presiding officer (PO) and I ensured the use of the smart card reader for accreditation, verification, authentication, collation and transmission of votes in my polling unit.
“At the end of voting, the information on the smart card reader, the results inclusive were collated by me in the presence of the party agents and other ad-hoc staff of the 1st respondent after which my assistant presiding officer (AP0-1) transmitted the result electronically in my presence to INEC’s server using the smart card reader and the code provided by the commission.”
Another presiding officer said, “I was employed as an ad hoc staff and trained for three days by the 1st respondent at the Government College, Maiduguri, Borno State to serve as a presiding officer (PO) at Waliri Polling Unit with Code 003, of Shehun Barna Ward, Bomo State on the 23rd February, 2019 Presidential and National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives) elections.”
