INEC server: Atiku calls Microsoft, IBM, Oracle to testify

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, is insistent that the Independent National Electoral Commission stored election results in a server and has said he will call Microsoft, IBM and Oracle experts to testify that he defeated President Muhammadu Buhari by over 1.6 million votes.

Atiku gave the server name as INEC_PRES_RSLT_SRV2019 and its unique Mac address as 94-57-A5-DC-64-B9 with Microsoft Product ID 00252-70000-0000-AA535, in his fresh response to the reply of INEC to his petition.

The Punch reported that Atiku and the PDP will also be expected to tender INEC’s training manual on elections, a printout of the votes of candidates from smart card readers and a printout of the forensic audit report on INEC’s server as evidence.

The former Vice-President and the PDP claimed to have polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress who he said scored 16,741,430 votes.

However, INEC’s Director, Information and Communications Technology, Mr Chidi Nwafor, in his witness statement on oath attached to the reply, specifically denied the “server results” which the PDP and Atiku claimed.

He said all the results were collated manually and were never transmitted electronically.

Atiku, in his fresh response, said the figures he claimed to have scored were genuine.

The reply read in part, “The servers from which the said figures were derived belong to the 1st respondent (INEC). The figures and votes were transmitted to the 1st respondent’s Presidential result’s server 1 and thereafter aggregated in INEC_PRES_RSLT_SRV2019 whose physical address or unique Mac address as 94-57-A5-DC-64-B9 with Microsoft Product ID 00252-70000-0000-AA535. The descriptions are unique to the 1st respondent’s server.”