INEC counters Atiku, says there was no result on its servers

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has denied having the result of the 2019 presidential election on its servers, contrary to claims by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

The electoral body made the denial in its response to the petition of the PDP and Atiku to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, adding that the result of the election was never transmitted or collated electronically.

INEC’s lead counsel, Yunus Usman, also contended that the electoral body did not keep such server where such electronically transmitted results could have been obtained.

It would  be recalled that Atiku, relying on the supposed figures from servers, claimed he defeated President Muhammadu Buhari.

The INEC’s Director, Information and Communications Technology, Mr Chidi Nwafor, in his witness statement on oath attached to the reply, specifically denied the “server results” which the petitioners were laying claim to, insisting that all the results were manually collated.

Nwafor said: “That the petitioners are claiming that votes recorded at the various polling units were electronically transmitted, and stored in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server.

“That the petitioners are also claiming that based on the server contents, they and not the 2nd and 3rd respondents won the presidential election.

“That these claims of the petitioners are false as I know as a fact that the 2nd respondent was duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the presidential election and scored at least a quarter of the lawful votes cast at the election in 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, more than two-thirds of all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

“That the petitioners did not win the majority of the lawful votes cast and did not satisfy the mandatory constitutional requirement to be declared winner having polled 11,262,978 and one quarter of all lawful votes cast in 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja as against the 2nd respondent who scored 15,191,847 votes cast and one quarter of the lawful votes cast in 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

“That the lawful and recognised computation of results is manually done using Electoral Form EC8 series and not the table pleaded by the petitioners given that the said table is not the result collated and declared by the 1st respondent.

“That I know as a fact that the details contained in the table in the paragraph 22 of the petition are inaccurate.

“That I know that mode of transmitting/collating election results is manual, using Forms EC8As, EC8Bs, EC8Cs and EC8Ds and not electronically done.

“That I know that the Manual Technologies 2019 and demonstration videos referred to in paragraph 27 are internal training materials.”