An official of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) Ekene Enefe, has claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not immediately transmit the result of the February 25th Presidential election online because other political parties imported hackers from Russia and Israel to hack the INEC server.
Enefe, who is also in charge of Contact Mobilization of the APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), stated this on Friday while featuring on an Arise TV programme. According to him, the allegation was based on ‘intelligence’ gathered by the APC.
INEC server prone to attacks: Emphasising his claim that the opposition parties wanted to manipulate the election through the online transmission of results, he said:
- “Each party has a situation room, they’ve known the result, and they knew they were losing, and want to cling to something, and what they want to cling on is the transmission of the results in the portal.
- “But people don’t know how many times INEC’s server was hacked and attacked, and this was done by political parties that brought in Russian and Israeli hackers. I’m just giving you an intelligence report that I am privileged to…to hack into INEC server and to transmit their own result and create chaos.”
Asked if the APC was also involved in the alleged hacking, Enefe replied saying:
- “None of them succeeded. That’s why the election results, to the best of my knowledge, were not transmitted to the INEC server.”
INEC’s explanation: Enefe’s claim is, however, entirely different from the explanations offered by INEC regarding the reasons behind the inability of Presiding Officers to upload the presidential results on the IReV portal from their various polling units.
In a statement released on Sunday and signed by INECS National Commissioner and Chairman,
Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, the Commission said it was aware of challenges with the results viewing Portal (IReV), adding that it had been relatively slow and unsteady. INEC stated:
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.
Consequently, the Commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems, and that the IReV remains well-secured. Our technical team is working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, and users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.”
Opposition political parties brought in Russian and Israeli hackers to manipulate the election results. INEC's server was shut down to prevent chaos and mitigate the attempt to steal the will of Nigerians – Ekene Enefe, Contact Mobilization, APC Presidential Campaign Council pic.twitter.com/LbjXb5CMoo
— ARISE NEWS (@ARISEtv) March 3, 2023
