BEVERLY HILLS, August 21, (THEWILL) – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that the claims that the 2019 presidential election results were transmitted to a server is, “the greatest lie of the century.”
It made the submission at the resumed hearing of the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar who are challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 23, 2019, poll.
The commission had earlier denied having a server where the results of the February 23 presidential election were uploaded but Atiku and PDP claimed that the results they obtained from the INEC server indicated that Mr Abubakar won the poll with over a million votes.
During the court session on Wednesday, INEC’s lead counsel, Yunus Usman, while adopting his final address, noted that the electoral act prohibits the transmission of results electronically.
The counsel explained that the act only provides for the manual transmission of results.
“We humbly submit that INEC conducted the presidential election on the 23rd day of February 2019 in compliance with the electoral act and the petitioners can never disown that,” he said.
“The issus of transmitting results electronically or through server has been the greatest lie of this century because my lords they say the results transmitted were only Atiku and Buhari whereas about 70 political parties participate in the election.
“The act itself prohibits the transmission of election results electronically. The act and the manual only provide for manual transmission and collation of elections results and that is what they did and that is what their witness admitted under cross-examination.”
He further asked the tribunal led by Mohammed Garba to dismiss the petition which he said was meant to “test waters.”
