Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed
Lai Mohammed embarrasses INEC, admits IReV portal ‘deliberately’ disabled to stop cyberattacks
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has dashed the argument long held by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that technical glitches prevented the electoral umpire from uploading results of the February 25 Presidential poll in real time.
Speaking in Washington DC, United States, during his official engagement with some international media organisations, Tuesday, Alhaji Mohammed who had earlier accused the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi and his running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, of inviting insurrection and treason against the Nigerian government, said INEC ‘deliberately’ failed to upload results sheets of the Presidential poll to guard against perceived hackers’ attempts at sabotaging the electoral exercise.
“Under our laws today, management of election results is manual and the court has ruled that INEC has the exclusive right to determine the mode of election, its collation, and transmission.
“What happened on the 25th of February was that INEC observed that the results of the Presidential elections were not being viewed.
“INEC, suspecting cyber-attack, withheld the uploading of the results in order to preserve the integrity of the data.
“It immediately proceeded to float an alternative platform while asking its technicians to investigate what happened to its original portal.
“Nothing gives this election more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our bigwigs come from,” the minister said.
It would be recalled that INEC had long held that technical glitches forced the commission to delay real time upload of the results sheets of the Presidential elections on its IReV portal for public view, as promised, a situation which was resolved the following day, Sunday, February 26.
This is as opposition parties like the Labour Party (LP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have insisted that failure by INEC to upload he result sheets enabled mass rigging and other electoral malpractices carried out against their respective candidates in the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly polls.
Explaining the commission’s inability to upload results real time to its IReV portal, INEC Commissioner and Director, Information and Voter Education Committee had explained a day after the election that ‘the problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, state elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections.’
The explanation has held since the conclusion of the polls until Mohammed added another angle to the controversy which is also before the elections petition tribunal.
“The Commission regrets this setback, especially because of the importance of IReV in our results management process.
“The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, State elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections. It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations,” said Okoye.
Meanwhile, the minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami has also recently claimed that millions of cyberattacks were recorded on February 25 day of the presidential and National Assembly polls.
Obi and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have all alleged doctoring of results during collation, INEC not following the Electoral Act guidelines in real time upload of results sheets, prayers they both also sought in their separate petitions before the tribunal sitting in Abuja.
