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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.
Premium Times
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he has told US negotiators “not to rush into a deal” with Iran, amid anticipation — and mounting criticism — of an agreement to end the war in the Middle East.
“The negotiations are proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner, and I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
“The Blockade will remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed.”
The United States has imposed a blockade of Iranian ports since April 13 after Tehran virtually halted traffic through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz in response to the US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began February 28.
“Both sides must take their time and get it right,” Trump wrote in the same Truth Social post, while slamming the 2015 nuclear deal that former president Barack Obama agreed with Iran.
“Our relationship with Iran is becoming a much more professional and productive one. They must understand, however, that they cannot develop or procure a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb,” Trump wrote.
While the White House has not released aspects of the deal, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Saturday on state television that the two sides were nearing a “a memorandum of understanding, a kind of framework agreement composed of 14 clauses,” in “a trend toward rapprochement.”
Several voices, notably among Republican lawmakers close to Trump, expressed fears of an agreement favorable to Iran as supposed aspects of the deal that began to leak.
According to news outlet Axios, a possible agreement would extend the current ceasefire by 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened, Iran would freely sell oil, and negotiations would be held on Iran’s nuclear program.
The top Republican senator overseeing defense policy, Roger Wicker, said that agreeing to a “rumored 60-day ceasefire” with Iran would mean, “everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”
Fellow Republican senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham also voiced opposition to Iran soon gaining benefits such as the ability to sell its oil freely.
“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime — still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ — now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” Cruz, a Republican from Texas, wrote on X.
Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said the deal “doesn’t make sense to me.”
“We were told about 11 weeks ago by (Secretary of Defense Pete) Hegseth and the Department of Defense that they had obliterated Iran’s defenses, and it was just a matter of time before we had the nuclear material. Now we’re talking about a posture where we may accept the nuclear material remaining in Iran. How does that make sense at all?” Tillis said on CNN’s “State of the Union” morning program.
AFP
Adebayo Adelabu, one of the aspirants for the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket in Oyo State, has alleged irregularities in the party’s governorship primary election held on Thursday.
Adelabu, who expressed dissatisfaction over the conduct of the exercise, stated that the primary was characterized by misconduct ranging from disenfranchisement of his supporters in some wards and the commencement of election process earlier than scheduled.
Speaking after the conclusion of the primary election at IMG School, Ward 9, Ibadan South-East Local Government Area, the immediate past Minister of Power alleged that the process was neither free, fair nor credible.
He said: “Before our people started getting to their various wards, they have already conducted the election and they wrote the figures they want as results.
“In some wards, our people were prevented from voting. They were intimidated. They were chased away violently. And in some wards, voting did not take place at all.
“All this kind of misconduct is not good at this stage of our democracy in Nigeria, and something has to be done about it.”
Adelabu, therefore, vowed to come up with serious petitions against all the irregularities not just in Ibadan, but across all the five geopolitical zones in Oyo State.
“Also, conduct of many party executives is uncalled for, a lot of people bought forms and they were cleared. And they decided to conduct affirmation of a particular candidate in some wards.
“There was nothing like consensus arrangement. It was just a figment of their weird imagination. The instruction we got from Abuja was that we should all carry out free, fair, and transparent direct primary election where every aspirant will be given a level playing ground and the election will be conducted peacefully.
“Where did they get the idea of consensus candidates? And this is what happened in a lot of the wards. And it didn’t go down well with us. “We don’t want that. We are going to assess the gravity of this gross misconduct and the potential impact on the overall result of this election.
“I will put a petition forward to the appropriate authorities so that it can be deeply investigated and there must be consequences to this. The people who perpetrated this misconduct must be identified and punished. And the aspirants involved also need to be suspended because this is not good for us.
“Democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people where nobody should be disenfranchised. Once you are a party member, you should have that freedom, that authority to pick an aspirant of your choice as the flag bearer of the party.
“This is Ibadan, this is Oyo State and this the centre of politics in the southwest. And we should be able to lay good examples and the process should produce a candidate that won transparently, freely and fairly,” he said.
Meanwhile, at Ward 9, Ibadan South-East Local Government, Adelabu, polled 430 to defeat his closest rival, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, who had 3 votes.
Al Nassr captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, has finally won the Saudi Pro League title.
They were confirmed champions on Thursday, thanks to a 4-2 drubbing of relegation battlers, Damac.
The title race had gone down to the final day after Al-Nassr dramatically dropped points against Al-Hilal the previous week.
Jorge Jesus’ side knew there could be no mistakes against a Damac side fighting for survival at the other end of the table.
Ronaldo was on the scoresheet, as his brace helped Al Nassr secure the title ahead of rivals Al Hilal.
