2019 Election: INEC Responds To Atiku’s ‘Server Results’

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDPs) presidential candidate in the 2019 election, Atiku Abubakar has been accused by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of concocting results of the last presidential election to prove his case at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal.

Naija News understands that the commission filed its response on Thursday at the tribunal in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

In the petition, the electoral umpire distanced itself from an electronic sheet that purportedly contained the genuine results of the presidential election.

This online news platform recalls that the legal team of the PDP Presidential candidate submitted the sheet at the tribunal in March, contending it was obtained from an internal compilation of results on INEC’s Internet server.

The team, amongst other submissions, held that the PDP Presidential candidate won the Presidential election by more than six million votes, but his victory was allegedly suppressed by the electoral body in favour of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s incumbent President and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nigeria’s ruling party.

In response, Buhari’s campaign wrote to the police and the State Security Service to launch a criminal investigation against Abubakar. It accused the former Vice-President of maliciously accessing INEC’s files.

Reacting to Abubakar’s election results allegedly obtained from its server, INEC said it, “does not share information with such an unclassified entity and any information purportedly derived therefrom which does not accord with the result as declared by INEC is not authentic but rather was invented for the purpose” of the tribunal, according to excerpts of the filing.

The electoral umpire in a 291-page response noted that it did not transmit results via electronic channels but used manual collation as stipulated by law. It, however, did not say whether it collated results from across the country and compiled them on an Internet-enabled computer.

“INEC specifically denies the existence of electronic transmission of results and it is unknown to the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended),” it states.

The commission declared Buhari winner of the February 23 Presidential election with about 3.9 million votes.