INEC Didn’t Give Us Sever Name, It Gave Us Confidential Code For Result Transmission – Ad Hoc Electoral Officer
An Assistant Presiding Officer 1 during the last presidential election, Mr Ogunsanya Abiola, told the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja on Tuesday, that the Independent National Electoral Commission did not disclose the name of the server into which the results of the poll were said to have been electronically transmitted.
Abiola, who appeared before the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garba (SAN), at the instance of the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, said INEC only gave them a confidential code with which to access the server.
He said the code was issued early morning on the day of the election.
INEC had declared Buhari and his All Progressives Congress the winner of the February 23 presidential election.
But challenging the victory of Buhari and the APC at the poll, the petitioners claimed that the true and actual results of the election electronically transmitted to INEC’s server showed that they defeated Buhari in the election.
INEC has since denied the existence of the server.
Cross-examining the petitioners’ 16th witness on Tuesday, the commission’s lawyer, Fabian Ajogu (SAN), asked the witness to give the name and the number of the server into which he claimed to have transmitted the results of the election in his polling unit.
Responding Abiola said, “I personally transmitted the election information to INEC server. There is no name or number.
“We were only given a code with which to transmit the election information to the server.”
Asked if he indicated the code in its witness statement on oath which he earlier adopted as his testimony, he said, “The code contains figures and letters. It was confidential and they said we should not disclose it to anyone.”
When asked, he confirmed that it was not stated in the manual issued by INEC that it was the duty of APO 1 to transmit the results of the election.
But he said he and other polling officers were trained in the morning of the election and were thereafter issued the code before proceeding to the polling units.
He said, “It is not stated in the manual that APO 1 should transmit results.
“They did not use the manual to train us. In the course of the training they told us that since the APO 1 had access to the smart card reader, the APO 1 could transmit the election information.
“The RATECH trained us and that was when they issued the code to us.”
Under cross-examination by APC’s lawyer, Funke Adegoke (SAN), Abiola also said in response to a question, “They trained us between 5am and 6am on the election day and that was when they issued the code with which to transmit the results to the server.”
