President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign organization has formally accused the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar of complicity in hacking the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and for parading fake results; in violation of the 2015 Cybercrime Act, an action which carries a maximum prison sentence of five years or a fine of up to N10 million; or both, depending on the purpose of the hack.
It must however be noted that INEC has not made any declaration to the effect that its computers or its servers have been hacked, let alone establish culpability as to the identity of the hackers. But the APC campaign team spokesperson, Festus Keyamo, Monday in a petition he sent to the Inspector General of Police and the Director General of the State Security Service, said that “some criminally-minded PDP operatives” hacked the INEC server “to smuggle in fake results into that server.” Keyamo is calling on the police and the secret service to investigate and possibly prosecute the PDP leadership for alleged criminal conduct.
Keyamo’s accusations came after Atiku formally approached the lection petition tribunal to make his case of what he [Atiku] described as a “sham” election. In the petition sent to the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja against INEC, Buhari and the APC as the first, second and third respondents, respectively, the defence stated in its 139-page petition that “from the data in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server…the true, actual and correct results” from “state to state computation” showed that Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.”
The party said the results were the total votes scored by the candidates in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, as there was “no report on sever” about the results from Rivers State as of February 25, 2019. By this, Atiku claimed to have defeated Buhari with 1,615,302 votes.
However, Keyamo said the PDP “have access to the INEC server is by the criminal hacking of the server or through the criminal conspiracy of some INEC officials.” Keyamo made the rather bizarre claim that the results Atiku is referencing from the INEC server were computed into the server by PDP operatives who hacked into INEC computers.
Keyamo said the fake results being peddled by the PDP went viral on social media on the eve of the general elections that were postponed by INEC. “Upon the last-minute postponement of the February 16, 2019 Presidential/National Assembly Elections, the nation was shocked to see already prepared presidential elections results floating around in the cyber space just less than 24 hours after the postponed election was originally billed to hold,” Keyamo said in the petition.
“The fake results had details of the scores of the candidates of the major parties. Of course, the fake results gave victory to the candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, even when elections did not hold,” Keyamo added.
