INEC employed a third-party device to alter Tinubu election results – ATIKU

Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, of installing a third-party device that was allegedly used to intercept and switch results of the February 25 presidential election in favor of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and its candidate Bola Tinubu.

In a 66-page petition filed before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in the Court of Appeal in Abuja, Atiku alleged that INEC had replaced its in-house ICT expert, Mr. Chidi Nwafor, with an IT Consultant who assisted it in installing the third-party mechanism prior to the election.

According to Atiku, the aforementioned IT Consultant, Mr. Suleiman Farouk, mediated the device between the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and the IRev Portal, also known as the Device Management System, DMS.

He told the court that the DMS was the software that enabled Mr. Farouk, the INEC IT Security Consultant, to remotely control, monitor, and filter data transmitted from the BVAS devices to the electronic collation system and the IRev platform.

“The 1st Respondent (INEC) hired an appointee of the 2nd Respondent (INEC) to man and supervise the sensitive ICT Department of the 1st Respondent for the Election.

“External 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 devised and installed an intervening third-party device (Device Management System) which, in its normal usage, is intended to secure and administer the 1st Respondent’s technological ecosystem for the elections, but as it relates to the presidential election, was used to upload data to the electronic collation system

“The 1st Respondent manipulated election results in favor of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents using the aforementioned Device Management System.”

“The petitioners assert and shall introduce expert testimony to demonstrate 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 Voter Accreditation System, VAS, which is the software used on the BVAS, was previously designed and configured in-house by the ICT Team of the 1st Respondent, led by Mr. Chidi Nwafor, and installed on the BVAS.

“The VAS was then transferred to Emperor Technology China prior to the Presidential Election, who preconfigured and installed the software on the BVAS before delivering the devices to the 1st Respondent via Activate Nigeria Limited.

INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) is a web-based data entry and aggregation portal designed by Chidi Nwafor’s team and hosted by Amazon Web Service, AWS.

“The device server system and portal are hosted on Amazon Web Service (AWS) URL:dashboard.ivasportal.com/dash,” he added.

In addition, Atiku, who came in second place in the presidential election, argued in the petition he filed with his party, PDP, that INEC, which had set the parameters for the election, “did not ensure compliance with the electronic transmission of accreditation data and election results to allow for the manipulation of figures to the benefit of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents.”

The petitioners stated that they would present evidence during the hearing of the petition to demonstrate that there were no technical issues that prevented the upload and transmission of the presidential election’s polling unit results and accreditation data to the electronic collation system and IReV portal.

They claimed that what occurred was “the non-adherence to the system through a command and control element activated by a pre-programmed design to limit user-privileges of the front-end users of the BVAS machines at the polling units with regard to presidential election results while releasing user privileges with regard to the National Assembly election windows, by selectively withholding correct passwords and/or issuing incorrect passwords through the use of the Device Manger.”

“No server failures, contrary to INEC’s claims”

In arguing that there was no server failure as claimed by INEC, the petitioners stated that they would present evidence to demonstrate that the “server,” being cloud-based, would have seamlessly switched to another server in the event of any improbable challenge, being autoscaling groups with multiple network reception and offline upload options.

“The petitioners assert that the technology system deployed by the first respondent was subject to Quality Assurance Tests (“QAT”) prior to acquisition and deployment.

“Notice is hereby given to the 1st Respondent to produce the QAT Report that was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, as well as the Report of Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing, VAPT, by Consultant Suleiman Farouk of Sulfman Consulting Limited, and all subsequent and related reports on the system.

“The petitioners argue that the so-called ‘glitch’ was an attempt to tilt and switch the presidential election results in favor of the second and third respondents,” they added.

In addition, they stated that they would subpoena PwC, expert witnesses regarding the electronic collation system and the IReV portal, as well as Kaspersky Endpoint Security (of Thurhill Office Park, Bekkerand, Midrand, South Africa), which provided the system security for the BVAS and e-transmission system deployed by INEC, and Globacom Nigeria Limited, the internet provider for the system deployed by INEC, to testify before the court.

“The petitioners shall also present the testimony of statisticians, forensic examiners, fingerprint and ICT experts at the hearing of the petition to establish that the figures/scores awarded to the 2nd Respondent were not the result of valid votes actually cast, but rather a result of allocation by the 1st Respondent, and that the total result declared is inconsistent with and cannot be reconciled with the number of duly accredited voters.

“The petitioners argue and will rely on BVAS reports, the results sheets of polling units, wards, local governments, states, and the national manually collated results, as well as electronic video recordings of several acts of electoral process violations by the Respondents.”

“Full results were not uploaded prior to announcing a winner.”

Atiku and his party argued that, as of March 1, when Tinubu was declared the winner of the election, INEC had not transmitted and uploaded the complete results and accreditation data from polling units.

“The petitioners contend that the 1st Respondent is in clear violation of the law under Sections 60 and 64(4) and (5) of the Electoral Act 2022 by failing to use the BVAS to transmit election results and accreditation data from polling units to the electronic collation system and the IRev Portal.”

Despite the failure to do so and a number of complaints for review, the chairman of the 1st Respondent refused all entreaties and applications for the suspension of the collation exercise and a review of the complaints prior to announcing an election winner, and repeatedly dared the petitioners to go to court.

“The petitioners contend that contrary to the provisions of the 1st Respondent’s Regulations and Manual, which stipulate the transmission of both accreditation data and the polling units’ results from the BVAS directly and in real-time to the electronic collation system and the IReV portal, the 1st Respondent introduced a device manager known as the Collation Support and Results Verification System, CSRVS, with which the results from the polling units were quarantined, prior to transmission to the electronic collation system

Tinubu did not receive one-fourth of FCT votes.

Atiku argued that Tinubu did not receive at least a quarter of the votes cast in the presidential election held in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. He emphasized that of the 478,652 total votes cast in the FCT, Abuja, only 90,902 (18.99%) were attributed to Tinubu.

“The petitioners will argue that in order to be declared duly elected, in addition to receiving at least 25% of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states, a candidate must also receive at least 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. This is an additional requirement introduced by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), the said Constitution having clearly distinguished the FCT, Abuja as a separate entity.

“Further, the petitioners assert that there were numerous cases of overvoting in Nigeria. In the petitioners’ requested and relied-upon statistician’s report, the total number of affected polling locations in the various states is listed.

They are, among other things, asking the court to rule that Tinubu was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast in the election and that, as a result, INEC’s declaration and return of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election was unlawful, wrong, unconstitutional, undue, null, void, and without any effect.

“That it be determined that the 2nd Respondent was ineligible to contest said election at the time of the election.”

(TNT)