How INEC Uploaded Picture Of a Book Instead Of Results – Witness » Naijaloaded

June 23, 2023 Stan

A cyber security expert, Dr. Chibuike Ugwoke, on Thursday, alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, uploaded the picture of a book on its results viewing portal, IReV, instead of results of the presidential election that held on February 25.

Ugwoke, testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, as the eight witness, PW-8, in the case the candidate of Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi, filed to nullify President Bola Tinubu’s election.

Though the PW-8, who was described as an expert witness, commenced his evidence on Wednesday, however, the court deferred his cross-examination after the Respondents complained that they needed time to study his statement on oath.

Consequently, at the resumed proceedings on Thursday, he was recalled to the witness box, even as all the Respondents took turns to grill him before the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the court.

Aside from INEC, other Respondents in the matter, are; President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Answering questions under cross-examination, Dr. Ugwoke, said he conducted analysis on INEC’s ICT infrastructure which he termed as “Meta Data”.

He told the court that the Meta Data, described the actual information in the system.

The witness said he used 12 polling units in three states- Bauchi, Anambra and Rivers state- as focal points of his analysis, adding that he equally made reference to Benue state in his report that was tendered before the court.

He told the court that the petitioners approached him on March 10 to analyse what INEC uploaded to its IReV portal after the presidential election.

“Though I initially sent a preliminary report which was more like an overview, around March 1, I later wrote an elaborate report in the middle of May,” he stated.

The witness, however, admitted that he read Obi’s petition as well as replies by the Respondents, before he wrote his final report that was tendered in evidence.

“I read the replies some time in the middle of my work, that was before the final report was made.”

He told the court that his analysis revealed that INEC officials made incorrect inputs into the IReV portal, using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines.

Asked if he knew the identities of those that made the incorrect inputs, the witness, said: “I don’t know who made the uploads, but it was from the BVAS and the number is there.”

He said though he did not in the course of his assignment, interrogate any INEC official, “but I interrogated the INEC manual.”

Asked if he contacted the Labour Party to give him what should have been the actual results from the polling units, the witness, said: “No my lords, I did not”.

“In one of the instances, the picture of a book was uploaded instead of election results.

“I interrogated the Amazon Web Services, AWS, that was how I got to know because the information was there in the server,” he insisted.

He told the court that out of 176, 846 polling units in the country, he chose only 12 of them based “on my proof of consent.”

On claim by INEC that technical glitches hampered the electronic transmission of results, the witness, told the court that such errors in technology could be detected at the time of testing of an application before its deployment.

He said: “Errors arise at the time of testing, but after deployment, the probability for an error to arise may be very negligible. However, it is not impossible for error to arise after deployment.

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