By: Ifeanyi Izeze
The news today, Monday 29th July, 2019, that the Independent National
Electoral Commission INEC, failed to call witnesses to counter claims of
misdemeanour against the commission by the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) and its presidential candidate in the February 23 presidential
poll Atiku Abubakar, must have come as a rude shock to all Nigerians
seeking to know the truth in the ServerGate controversy.
The electoral body who is the first Respondent was supposed to call its
witnesses, Monday 29th but rather announced to the court that the
commission does not have any witness/evidence to present and would
rather rely on the proceedings at the tribunal as its defence. In what
looks like a dramatic turnaround, INEC chickened out at the hearing of
the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT).
Now, INEC is the main culprit, they announced Buhari as winner and yet
have no witnesses, no forms nor backend data to tender? Is this not
curious?
Glaringly, the commission has no one to confirm its denial of the
existence of a backend server used in its electronic collation of
results. This is an obvious sign that the commission is overwhelmed by
the convincing evidence/testimonies of witnesses presented by Atiku and
the PDP.
INEC should be meant to understand that opting to respond to the
allegations and issues raised and established by the petitioners just by
written addresses simply to avoid cross examination, is at best being
clever by half and the PEPT should not allow this because it’s not
only dubious, it is equally criminal as the people of Nigeria deserve to
know what transpired and how INEC arrived at the decision to announce
Buhari as winner of the poll.
The public is aware that contrary to what INEC would want Nigerians
believe, data forensic experts at the PEPT were able to successfully
establish that figures being bandied around by the commission for the
February presidential poll defies mathematical and statistical logic
mostly in the southern region of the country due to electoral
manipulation.
The data shows that the election was heavily manipulated in the Southern
part of Nigeria. A turnout ratio that is less than 29.5 percent for the
Southern part of Nigeria is not statistically possible. Even the North
East that is battling with insurgencies and humanitarian crisis has a
turnout that is above 60 percent. So whosoever orchestrated the
manipulation of the election results actually did it clinically to
confuse future investigation.
From the INEC data as obtained from the commission’s server, the PDP
presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar won in the South with a margin of
3.2 million. The winning margin would have been more if votes from
Rivers state were available. In the North we had (Atiku-9.23 m,
Buhari-10.68) showing that President Buhari won in the North with a
margin of 1.45 million votes.
Total accreditation for the presidential election was 37.6 million;
Total voided votes were 1.23 million and; Total votes cast – 36.4
million.
A total of 8.68 million votes were depleted from the votes of both
Buhari and Atiku nationwide but with Atiku Abubakar being the NETT loser
of 7.09 million votes.
The unlawful depletion of votes is the reason why the election conducted
by INEC defies statistical and mathematical rationality.
Probing the entire Southwest, Southeast, and South south presidential
results, it was glaring from the INEC data that while PVC collection
went up by 34.4 percent (24.18m – 32.49m), total votes in the Southern
part of Nigeria declined by 23.4 percent (from 12m to 9.19m). On the
other hand, the e-collated result shows a positive relationship between
PVC collection and total votes in the Southern part of Nigeria. PVC
collection went up by 34.4 percent and total votes in the Southern part
of Nigeria grew by 26.6 percent (from 12m to 15.2m).
For the 19 northern states and FCT, while PVC collection went up by 25.6
percent (32m – 40.2m), total votes in the region increased marginally
by 6 percent (from 16.2m to 17.2m). On the other hand, the e-collated
result shows a positive relationship between PVC collection and total
votes in the Northern part of Nigeria. PVC collection went up by 25.6
percent and total votes in the region grew by 22.7 percent (from 16.22m
to 19.91m).
Statistics for the entire nation (36 states and FCT) show that PVC
collection went up by 29 percent while changes in marginal votes went
down by 2.8 percent (manual collation) and for electronic collation,
changes in marginal votes increased up by 23.8 percent.
Logically, a significant increase in PVC collection ought to translate
into an increase in voters’ turnout or total votes cast. Therefore,
the e-collated result proves a fact that the 2019 election was
manipulated.
The authentic result that should have been declared by INEC would have
had Atiku/PDP with 18.35 million votes as the winner while President
Buhari/APC with 16.7 million votes as the first runner up. The other
presidential candidates cumulatively garnered 1.3 million votes.
It is now understandable why some people love to argue that the Nigerian
constitution does not recognise e-voting. They are only trying to be
clever by half because it is only someone with dubious intentions that
would prefer the manually collated result without audit re-confirmation.
Yes the constitution does not recognise e-voting but e-collation and
e-transmission are simply known as process automation. An organisation
does not need constitutional amendments to automate their tasks,
procedures and processes.
So it is very clear that the February 23, 2019 Nigerian Presidential
poll was rigged. The PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar clearly won the
election but INEC has continued to deny him the stolen mandate but there
is no level of intimidation or propaganda overdrive that can deny the
obvious. God bless Nigeria!
(IFEANYI IZEZE: iizeze@yahoo.com; 234-8033043009)