Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2023 general elections has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of installing a third-party device to intercept and switch the results of the presidential election in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate, Bola Tinubu.
Atiku made the accusation in a 66-page petition lodged before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, where he further alleged that INEC had prior to the election, redeployed its in-house ICT expert, Mr Chidi Nwafor, and replaced him with an IT Consultant that helped it install the third-party mechanism.
Atiku’s claims reads: “The 1st Respondent (INEC) engaged an appointee of the 2nd Respondent (INEC) to man and oversee the sensitive ICT Department of the 1st Respondent for the purpose of the Election.
‘Third-party device installed’
“The petitioners contend and shall lead evidence to show that contrary to the original design of the BVAS machine to upload data directly to the electronic collation system and the IReV portal, the 1st Respondent contrived and installed an intervening third-party device (Device Management System) which, in its ordinary usage, is meant to secure and administer the 1st Respondent’s technological ecosystem for the elections but as it relates to the presidential election, was used to intercept the results, quarantine and warehouse same, and filter them before releasing same to the IReV portal.
“The 1st Respondent used the said Device Management System to manipulate the election results in favour of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents.
“The petitioners’ state and shall lead expert evidence to show the critical components of the 1st Respondent’s Information and Communications Technology, ICT, including but not limited to the BVAS which is an Android Device manufactured by Emperor Technologies China and supplied to the 1st Respondent by Activate Nigeria Limited.”
“The VAS was subsequently handed over to Emperor Technology China prior to the Presidential Election and they then preconfigured and installed the software on the BVAS before supplying the devices to the 1st Respondent through Activate Nigeria Limited.
“As it relates to the IReV, the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) is a web-based data entry and aggregation portal designed also by Chidi Nwafor’s team and is hosted on Amazon Web Service, AWS.
“The server system for the device and the portal are hosted on Amazon Web Service (AWS) URL:dashboard.ivasportal.com/dash,” he added.
Atiku’s lengthy petition summarily wants the court to declare that he, having scored the majority of lawful votes cast at the presidential election, be returned as the winner of the said election and be sworn in as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, or to issue an order directing INEC to conduct a second election (run-off) between the 1st petitioner (Atiku) and the 2nd Respondent (Tinubu). In their further alternative prayer, the petitioners urged the court to nullify the presidential election and order a re-run.
