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INEC presiding officers Testify under Oath, Say Results were Transmitted Electronically
No fewer than a dozen people who said they were 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.
A question about whether or not results were forwarded to a central database of the commission has been amongst the top grounds for contesting the presidential election results by Atiku Abubakar and his opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Mr Abubakar was the main challenger to President Muhammadu Buhari at the February 23 elections.
On February 27, the electoral umpire declared Mr Buhari winner of the elections, and issued him a certificate of return for a second four-year term starting May 29.
Mr Abubakar and his PDP challenged the results at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal last month, saying he won the election and was in possession of evidence that would upturn the declared outcome.
Mr Abubakar’s legal team submitted a different result to the tribunal, which showed the former vice-president as the winner of the election. The result showed Mr Abubakar had scored 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari, whom they said received 16,741,430 votes.
This contradicted the results declared by INEC, which said Mr Buhari received 15,191,847 votes against Mr Abubakar’s 11,262,978 votes.
Mr Abubakar’s lawyers said the results were released by an INEC whistleblower who had access to the commission’s internal server and other tools throughout the election.
They also provided unique identification information of computers that they said belonged to INEC, which they expected experts from Microsoft, IBM and Oracle to corroborate.
In its initial response to Mr Abubakar’s petition, INEC strongly denied operating a server during the election, saying such activities were not permitted by the electoral law. The commission accused Mr Abubakar of circulating fake results for the purpose of his petition.
Mr Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) also sided with the electoral umpire and alleged criminal interception of a public institution’s communication by Mr Abubakar and the PDP.
In a response to INEC’s denial of the server and its purported result, Mr Abubakar’s legal team attached affidavits from 12 persons they said worked for INEC.
The persons, according to the affidavits, said they worked as presiding officers and assistant presiding officers in Borno and Yobe. They were only identified in the documents by their initials, but a source close to Mr Abubakar told PREMIUM TIMES the witnesses will ultimately identify themselves in court.
The witnesses comprise seven presiding officers and five assistant presiding officers. They were six each from Borno and Yobe, and swore 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.
“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,” a typical testimony from one of the witnesses read.
The wording of the affidavits was identical. Assistant presiding officers also swore they sent the results to a designated INEC server.
Meanwhile, the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) said its observers saw polling officers ‘attempting’ to transmit results electronically in 65 per cent (961 of 1489) of polling units observed on the presidential election day.
The group’s director, Samson Itodo, said the data only captured polling officers who made attempts to transmit results using smart card readers. It could not confirm whether or not the transmissions were successful.
A spokesperson for INEC declined comments to PREMIUM TIMES about the comments of the presiding officers and their assistants.
The officers are usually deployed for elections on ad-hoc basis, and most of them were not the commission’s employees.
An election expert and director at one of the main election observer groups told PREMIUM TIMES some results were transmitted via the smart card readers, but were only designed to aggregate results from across the country.
“There were some polling units whose card readers were used to transmit results on election day for aggregation,” the expert said under anonymity because of his closeness to the commission and also to avoid publicly commenting on a matter already in court.
He suggested that INEC’s outright denial of electronic transmission of results could be because neither the electoral law nor its guidelines made provisions for electronic transmission of results.
“The law and the guidelines allowed only manual transmission in all the stages of the results collation,” the expert said. “That may be why the commission decided to deny using electronic means for its own internal compilation.”
He said only the court could hold INEC responsible for any discrepancy in its internal results and what the commission declared to the public.
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The Senate has granted approval to the ₦1.77 trillion ($2.2b) loan request of President Bola Tinubu after a voice vote in favor of the request.
The Senate presided by Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, approved the loan after the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts chaired by Senator Wammako Magatarkada (APC, Sokoto North) presented the report of the committee.
The request which was submitted by the President on Tuesday is part of a fresh external borrowing plan to partially finance the N9.7 trillion budget deficit for the 2024 fiscal year.
Tinubu had on Tuesday written to the National Assembly, seeking approval of a fresh N1.767 trillion, the equivalent of $2.209 billion as a new external borrowing plan in the 2024 Appropriation Act.
The fresh loan is expected to stretch the amount spent on debt servicing by the Federal Government. The Central Bank of Nigeria recently said that it cost the Federal Government $3.58 billion to service foreign debt in the first nine months of 2024.
The CBN report on international payment statistics showed that the amount represents a 39.77 per cent increase from the $2.56bn spent during the same period in 2023.
According to the report, while the highest monthly debt servicing payment in 2024 occurred in May, amounting to $854.37m, the highest monthly expenditure in 2023 was $641.70m, recorded in July.
The trend in foreign debt servicing by the CBN highlights the rising cost of debt obligations by Nigeria.
Further breakdown of international debt figures showed that in January 2024, debt servicing costs surged by 398.89 per cent, rising to $560.52m from $112.35m in January 2023. February, however, saw a slight decline of 1.84 per cent, with payments reducing from $288.54m in 2023 to $283.22m in 2024.
March recorded a 31.04 per cent drop in payments, falling to $276.17m from $400.47m in the same period last year. April saw a significant rise of 131.77 per cent, with $215.20m paid in 2024 compared to $92.85m in 2023.
The highest debt servicing payment occurred in May 2024, when $854.37m was spent, reflecting a 286.52 per cent increase compared to $221.05m in May 2023. June, on the other hand, saw a 6.51 per cent decline, with $50.82m paid in 2024, down from $54.36m in 2023.
July 2024 recorded a 15.48 per cent reduction, with payments dropping to $542.50m from $641.70m in July 2023. In August, there was another decline of 9.69 per cent, as $279.95m was paid compared to $309.96m in 2023. However, September 2024 saw a 17.49 per cent increase, with payments rising to $515.81m from $439.06m in the same month last year.
Given rising exchange rates, the data raises concerns about the growing pressure of Nigeria’s foreign debt obligations.
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Self acclaimed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Simon Ekpa, has been arrested by law enforcement in Finland.
The BBC reports that Ekpa was subsequently sent to prison by the district court of Päijät-Häme for “spreading terrorist propaganda on social media”.
Ekpa was said to have committed the crime in 2021 in Lahti municipality.
The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) also arrested four other men over alleged terrorist offences.
A citizen of Finland and Nigeria, Ekpa has described himself as leader of the separatist IPOB group since Nnamdi Kanu’s incarceration.
Finnish police say Ekpa’s activities and social media rhetoric may have fanned the flames of violence in the south-east of Nigeria.
“He carries out these activities from his social media channels, for example,” said Otto Hiltunen, detective chief inspector of the NBI.
In February 2023, Ekpa was arrested by police at his residence in Lahti but was released after hours of questioning.
Using his social media channels, Ekpa had directed Igbos not to participate in Nigeria’s 2023 general election.
In September 2021, the Biafra agitator and secessionist denounced Nigeria and vowed to return the medal he won for the country at the 2003 African Junior Athletics Championships.
The Court of Appeal has sacked Musiliu Akinsanya aka MC Oluomo as the National President of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
In a ruling that upheld the earlier judgment of the National Industrial Court, the appellate court sacked MC Oluomo and reaffirmed Tajudeen Baruwa as the legitimate leader of the union.
Baruwa had assumed office after a properly conducted election held at the union’s headquarters in Abuja.
The three-member panel of the Appeal Court dismissed the appeal filed by MC Oluomo’s faction, declaring it devoid of merit.
In addition, the court imposed a fine of N100,000 on the appellants, further solidifying Baruwa’s leadership position.
Reports quoting court documents said to have been released on Friday detailed the ruling, which effectively countered any attempts to displace Baruwa from his role as the NURTW president.
The judgment read: “This is an appeal against the judgment/decision of the National Industrial Court Sitting in Abuja, in Suit No. NICN/ABJ/263/2023, delivered on the 11th March, 2024, by Justice O. O. Oyewumi.
“Upon reading the Record of Appeal compiled and transmitted before this court, together with the respective briefs of argument, and after hearing the counsels for the appellants and respondents, it is hereby ordered that:
“This Appeal is devoid of merit, and the same is hereby dismissed.”
The ruling reinforces the legitimacy of Baruwa’s presidency, concluding the legal dispute over the union’s leadership.
Meanwhile, MC Oluomo’s son Idowu Akinsanya (King West) had bragged about his feat of emerging the NURTW president, saying: “We are now in charge of Nigeria, not only Lagos,” a comment that attracted public opprobrium.
MC Oluomo, a diehard supporter of President Bola Tinubu and a prominent figure in Lagos politics, was the sole candidate in the election, which took place at the union’s zonal secretariat in Osogbo. His perceived victory was deemed to carry significant implications for the future of the NURTW and the political landscape of Nigeria.
