All hopes of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has been dashed by the latest update by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC as the final report by the electoral commission has put an end to the tussle for the seat of the President.
INEC has called the allegations made by the presidential aspirant,
Atiku Abubakar nothing short of invention. Atiku claimed that he won the
February 23rd election with 18,356,732. INEC said that no server was
used to transmit the results of the presidential election and any
figures purportedly obtained thereof are fake.
INEC disowned the website, factsdontlie.com, which Atiku alleged
before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal as the source of the
election results he claimed to have won.
In response to Atiku’s petition, INEC also said “With
particular response to the issue of server and electronic transmission
and collation repeatedly referred to by the petitioners, as at date,
there is no legal framework in place for electronic voting, transmission
and collation of scores or results of the electioneering process.
“The Smart Card Reader till date was used for
authenticating registered voters not for sorting, counting, transmission
or collation as these processes are still manually done, given the
state of the law. The 1st respondent (INEC) has no server that contains
the purported results the petitioners are claiming they got from a
purported server.
The Electoral Commission said counting, sorting, transmission and
collation of votes during the 2019 general elections and the
presidential election, in particular, were all done manually and not
electronically and Atiku’s figures never existed in record. It
specifically denied the existence of electronic transmission of results
as it is unknown to the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended) and Regulations
and Guidelines for the conduct of the elections 2019.
Chidi Nwafor, the commission’s Director, Information and
Communications Technology, also denied Atiku’s claim about a server
branding it false and that Muhammadu Buhari was duly elected by the
majority of the lawful votes cast.
Witness added: ”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.
“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. I know as a fact that the details
contained in the table in the paragraph 22 of the petition are
inaccurate. I know that mode of transmitting/collating election results
is manual, using Forms EC8As, EC8Bs, EC8Cs and EC8Ds and not
electronically done. I know that the Manual Technologies 2019 and
demonstration videos referred to in paragraph 27 are internal training
materials.”
It was stated further that the website was neither created nor owned
by INEC and that no information is shared with such an unclassified
entity, therefore, rubbishing every information that emanated from the
website.
INEC has therefore shown satisfaction with the academic documents
submitted by Buhari for the purpose of the election. Atiku is claiming
in his petition that one of the schools Buhari claimed to have attended
could not be traced and that Buhari claimed to hold a certificate that
was not in existence at the time he claimed to have obtained it. But
INEC said it had no query over Buhari’s academic documents.
The Commission said it was “satisfied with the educational
qualification presented” by the president to run for the election.
INEC’s lawyer, Yunus Ustaz (SAN) brands Atiku’s petition as frivolous,
incompetent and/or lacking in merit. He prays the tribunal to dismiss
the petition. It plans to call 83 witnesses in its defence at the
presidential election petition tribunal sitting in Abuja.
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