INEC Give inability to make use of the server before petition - to the late release of funds for the election.
The claim by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that it has no server has just been confirmed.
With this report, Atiku’s the Presidential Election Tribunal is already looking shaky as a large chunk of his claims is based on the argument that INEC’s resident commissioners and Returning Officers transmitted collated results to its central server in Abuja.
Recall that Atiku and the PDP had claimed that the results of the Presidential election as seen on INEC’s server reveals that he won the presidential election with a margin of about 2 million.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has revealed that it only experimented the electronic transmission of results through the use of a server and it was not deployed in the 2019 general elections.
INEC said it after clamour rose for the commission to make it server available for the Peoples Democratic Party and its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
The commission had insisted it did not make use of a server in 2019 despite budgeting and receiving N2.27 billion for server-related procurement items.
Making this revelation, Solomon Soyebi, Osun State, INEC National Commissioner, explained that the issue of the server was dropped while adding that the commission only experimented the use of a server in the Anambra, Sokoto and Osun elections.
“We piloted the use of transmission of election results electronically in Sokoto, in Anambra, even in Osun. What happened was that we were trying to pilot to see the desirability of such technology in our electoral process.
“Once in a while, you will see an experiment going on but we have to pilot it before we will deploy wholesale for election. We did not use it because of circumstances beyond the control of the Commission,” Soyebi said.
Soyebi attributed the inability to make use of the server to the late release of funds for the election.
He said, “First, our budget came out very late. There was also (an) issue (with) the Electoral Act. For these and some other reasons, the commission did not adopt that option; 2019 elections were conducted according to the law.
“We used the Constitution of the Federal Republic, we used the Electoral Act and our guidelines for 2019 elections. If you look at the three instruments carefully, the issue of the server was not highlighted.”
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