Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign team Monday accused the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of hacking the computer server of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Festus Keyamo, the campaign team spokesperson, in a petition sent to the Inspector General of Police and the Director General of the State Security Service, said the only way PDP “can have access to the INEC server is by the criminal hacking of the server or through the criminal conspiracy of some INEC officials.”
Shortly after Buhari was declared winner of the 2019 presidential poll by INEC, the PDP’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, called the election a “sham” and promised to challenge the victory in court.
He had since dragged the APC and the election authorities to court. On March 5, he got the permission of Court of Appeal in Abuja to inspect and obtain Certified True Copy (CTC) of election materials used in the conduct of the February 23 presidential election by INEC.
Last Monday, Abubakar claimed that the computer server of INEC revealed that he won in four of the states, Gombe, Niger, Kogi, and Kaduna, that INEC said Buhari won.
He also said he won the poll with about 1.6 million votes ahead of Buhari.
However, Keyamo in his petition said the result presented by Abubakar were “fake results” prepared by the PDP prior the election.
He said the 1.6 million votes Abubakar is claiming is about the same margin in the “fake results.”
“Upon the last-minute postponement of the February 16, 2019 Presidential/National Assembly Elections, the nation was shocked to see already prepared presidential elections results floating around in the cyber space just less than 24 hours after the postponed election was originally billed to hold,” Keyamo said.
“The fake results had details of the scores of the candidates of the major parties. Of course, the fake results gave victory to the candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, even when elections did not hold,” he added.
The spokesman said “the sudden postponement of the election scuttled that evil plan, but it was too late to restrain the release of the fake results.”
Keyamo prayed that the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services investigate the hacking by the PDP.
“The leadership of the PDP must be invited, interrogated and investigated and those identified as perpetrators must be arrested and prosecuted,” Kayamo added.
