As software engineer testifies against INEC, Tinubu
Our Reporter
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has sought the order of the Court to interrogate the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on the type of technology it used during the 2023 polls.
This is as the LP candidate brought a Software Engineer, Mr. Anthony Chinwo, before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, to testify against INEC over manipulations of the devices.
Chinwo, who gave his evidence as the second petitioners’ witness, PW-2, told the court that though he was not familiar with the application of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, device, he said he has adequate knowledge of the operation of back-end servers.
Responding to questions under cross-examination, Obi’s witness, who equally identified himself as an Architect, told the court that he did not play any key role during the election.
Chinwo admitted that Amazon Web Services, AWS, which the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, used for the general elections, was one of the most trusted providers of Cloud Computer Services, with 99.9% security assurance.
According to him, the AWS is usually used by companies and individuals that are concerned about security of their data.
“However, deployment of AWS is one thing, but utilising it is something else,” he added.
On how he gathered information on the election, which he analysed, the witness, said: “My lords, I used publicly available INEC Application Programming Interface, API, to conduct analysis of the election.
“I used them to collect all the information that were available on the election. I did it over time during the period of the election.”
He maintained that INEC ought to have uploaded data to its server, starting from the polling unit level.
Asked if he knew the number of soft-wares that INEC deployed for the conduct of the election, the witness, said: “I am not a staff of INEC, so I am not in position to know the number of soft-wares that made the component of the soft-wares that INEC used for the 2023 election.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led panel, has admitted in evidence, four INEC’s Forms EC40G from Bayelsa State, which Obi tendered through a member of his legal team, Mr. Patrick Ikweto, SAN.
Form EC40G are summary of registered voters at polling units where election did not hold.
The court admitted the ones from Bayelsa State and marked them as Exhibits EG 1 to EG 4.
As usual, all the Respondents opposed the admissibility of the exhibits, they however reserved their reasons for the final written address.
The tribunal adjourned further proceedings till Friday, after it heard an application that Obi and the LP filed for permission to interrogate INEC on the technology it deployed for the conduct of the general elections.
All the Respondents prayed the court to dismiss the application which they said was brought outside the pre-hearing period.
Specifically, the petitioners, maintained that in view of INEC’s reply to their petition, it should be compelled to answer 12 questions, among which are; the date the electoral body conducted functionality test on the said improved system it deployed for the elections, as well as names and details of those that conducted the test.
They further want INEC to answer the following questions: “Who created/deployed the four (4) Applications Patches/Updates to fix the HTTP 500 error that prevented the e-transmission of the results of the Presidential election on 25th February 2023?
“What was the exact time of the occurrence of the technical glitch which prevented the e-transmission of the result of the Presidential election on 25th February 2023?
“What time were the technological glitches fixed and or repaired?
“What percentage of the result of the Presidential election was uploaded on the I-Rev on 25th February 2023?
“What percentage of the result of the Presidential election was uploaded on the I-Rev as at the time of the declaration of the Result of the Presidential election on 1st March 2023?
“If the Presidential Election was conducted concurrently with the National Assembly Elections on the same day and at the same time using the same technological devices, why were there glitches only with respect to the Presidential Election?,” the petitioners queried INEC in the application they described as very vital to their case against President Tinubu’s election victory.
