The Labour Party (LP) and its Presidential candidate on Thursday sought an order of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), to Interrogate the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the experts on Information and Communication Technology ICT) used for the conduct of the election.
The petitioner’s who filed two separate motions that were argued by their counsel, Mr Patrick Ikwueto, SAN, sought to know from the interrogatories, the quality of the ICT experts deployed in the use of technology for the conduct of the disputed election.
They equally asked the Court to compel INEC to supply them with names and profile of ICT personnel that handled the technological aspects of the election.
Ikwueto submitted that answers to the questions would his clients in establishing allegations of poor conduct especially malpractices in the conduct of the election as well as effective presentation of his petition challenging the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the election.
However, INEC represented by Mr Kemi Pinhero, SAN objected to Obi’s bid to subject his client to interrogation through incompetent applications.
The senior lawyer argued that Obi’s applications had become belated because he brought them outside the time allowed by law.
Specifically, Pinhero argued that such an application ought to have been brought and argued during the pre-hearing session, adding that bringing the application outside the pre-hearing session has robbed the court of jurisdiction to hear it.
He insisted that the application must fail because it is a waste of time, adding that the precious time of the court must not be expended on such a request.
President Tinubu represented by Chief Akin Olujimi, SAN and the All Progressives Congress (APC), represented by Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, also kicked against granting of the request, insisting that the application is grossly incompetent in the face of the law.
Meanwhile, the Presiding Justice, Haruna Tsammani has reserved ruling in the applications.
The Interrogatories requested the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) to provide answers to 12 questions as the following:
*What is the date of the testing for functionality as well as for stress and load balancing carried out on the improved system before its final deployment for the 2023 general election?
*What is the name/details of the person(s) that carried out the test on the system referred to in one above?
*Who created/deployed the four applications patches/upgrades to fix the HTTP 500 error that prevented the e-transmission of the results of the presidential election on February 25, 2023?
*What are the details of the four applications patches/upgrades created/deployed to fix the HTTP 500 error?
*What was the exact time of the occurrence of the technical glitch which prevented the e-transmission of the results of the presidential election on February 25, 2023?
*What are the details of the four patches/upgrades created/deployed to fix the HTTP 500 error referred to in paragraph 55 (vii) and 90 (x) of the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) reply to the petition?
*What time were the technological glitches fixed and or repaired?
*Were there any technical glitch after the successful upload of the results of the presidential election at 8:55pm on February 25, 2023?
*What percentage of the result of the presidential election was uploaded on the IReV on February 25, 2023?
*What percentage of the results of tge presidential election was uploaded on the IReV as at the time of the declaration of the result of the presidential election on March 1, 2023?
*Do you have documents/printouts to back your answers above; and if any, can they be produced to this court?
*If the presidential election was conducted concurrently with the National Assembly election on the same day and at same time, using the same technological devices, why were there glitches only with respect to the presidential election?
Meanwhile, the petitioners called their second witness (PW2), Anthony Chiwo who claimed to be a Software Engineer.
However, his attempt to discredit the technological devices used by INEC in the conduct of the general election failed under cross-examination by counsel to INEC, Tinubu, Shettima and APC.
Led in evidence by Obi’s legal team, represented by P.I Ekweto SAN, Anthony Chinwo asked the court to adopt his statement on oath.
Regardless, in his statement on oath before the court, he said from his knowledge of software engineering and computer operations, “the information or data generated/inputted in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System whether operating online or offline were transmitted to the INEC servers, including the virtual server hosted on the Amazon Web Services, AWS, Cloud Platform.”
He also deposed in his statement on oath that the AWS is the world’s most comprehensive platform which enables large enterprises and government agencies to “effectively and in real-time manage data”, thereby disputing the statement by INEC about technical glitches during the presidential election.
Under cross-examination, INEC lawyer, A.B Mahmoud SAN asked him if he was familiar with any of the applications on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines.
He responded in the negative but noted that he was familiar with the backend server and INEC Results Viewing Portal, IRev.
The witness was also asked if he believes that the Amazon Web Services, AWS, is the most secure provider of cloud services globally and that INEC engaged it for the purpose of securing the results
The witness agreed that the AWS was secured but explained that “It is not a fair conclusion” to conclude that INEC protected the actual results of the 2023 presidential poll.
“You are not a staff of Amazon?,” Mahmoud asked him.
No, I am not,” Chinwo replied.
When the turn of Tinubu and Kashim Shettima’s lawyer, Yusuf Ali SAN, came, he asked the witness if he was still standing by his statement on oath.
“They are seventeen paragraphs and I stand by them,” the witness replied.
When pressed further by Ali, the witness agreed that while the election is disputed, it is only INEC that prescribes the procedures for conduct of election in Nigeria.
APC lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi SAN, asked Chinwo to tell the court if it was his experience as an architect and software engineer that he used to write his statement on oath.
The witness said he wrote his statement on oath from his knowledge as a software engineer as well as his investigation of the INEC Results Viewing Portal, IRev.
The witness went on to say that he leveraged on the Application Programming Interface, API, to collect and study all the INEC publicly available information on the internet relating to the IRev and the 2023 election.
But Fagbemi asked him why he did not put his profile on oath, to which he replied that it was intentional and for sensitive reasons.
The petitioners thereafter tendered INEC Form EC40G from four Local Government Areas of Bayelsa State.
The Form EC 40G is a summary of registered voters of polling units where elections were cancelled or did not occur. The form is signed by a collation officer (ward level). It includes names of all polling units under the registration area where the election was not held/cancelled.
Attempts to proceed with further tendering of documents was unsuccessful and the Court orderdd the petitioners to “Go and organize yourself and come back tomorrow.”
The court decision was informed by the untidy nature of the documents put forward by the petitioners as majority of them were riddled with mistakes and improper numbering of pages.
Chairman of the PEPC, Justice Tsammani had while adjourning the petition lamented, ” You have over 100 lawyers in your team and you keep making mistakes everyday.’
