….seeks court order to interrogate INEC on ICT technology used for election
A Software Engineer, Mr. Anthony Chinwo, on Thursday, testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, in the case the candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi, filed to challenge the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.
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.
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Answering questions under cross-examination, the witness, who equally identified himself as an Architect, told the court that he did not play any key role during the election.
He 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.
He said the AWS was usually used by companies and individuals that are concerned about security of their data.
“However, deployment of AWS is one thing, but utilizing it is something else,” he added.
Asked 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.”
The witness maintained that INEC ought to have uploaded data to its server, starting from the polling unit level.
Continuing, the PW-2, while admitting that he was unable to vote on the election day, said he was equally not a staff of Amazon.
Asked if he knew the number of softwares 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 softwares that made the component of the softwares that INEC used for the 2023 election.”
After he was discharged from the witness box, the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel, 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.
Though all the Respondents opposed the admissibility of the Exhibits, they however reserved their reasons for the final written address.
Cited as 1st to 4th Respondents in the petition, are; the INEC, the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, the Vice-President-elect, Kashim Shettima, and the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Meanwhile, the court 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.
(Vanguard)
