Court Case: Atiku’s Server Evidence Brings International Dimension To His Case

Reports that the Peoples Democratic Party flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar may invite Microsoft, IBM and Oracle experts to prove that he actually got the result from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC,, server may have opened a new vista in a case that has already proved to be controversial.

Recall that Atiku has released results that he claimed were the authentic 2019 presidential results from the official server of INEC. In the result posted, Atiku claimed he won the election by 1.6 million votes, even without the result from Rivers state.

Rivers is said to be a PDP stronghold.

But in Court, he has questioned the sworn affidavit submitted by president Buhari, citing discrepancies in the the dates that Buhari claimed he was in such schools and the foundation dates of such schools. This is apart from the deposition about the election proper.

But the defense, instead of going into the points raised by Atiku, submitted that Atiku is a non Nigerian, an allegation that raised the bar against Atiku. Atiku rose to the position of a senior Customs officer before his retirement from the government agency, and was a Vice president in the country.

Though the tribunal was said to have ruled that Atiku is a Nigerian, it raised further issues of the real Identity of the Presidency.  They defense said that the Prosecution lawyer, who is a former attorney general and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is not qualified to practice law in Nigeria.

Nnamdi Kanu, the renegade Nigerian that has been agitating for the actualization of Biafra, was the first person to make an allegation that Atiku is not a Nigerian but a Cameroonian. But he recanted recently, rather advising Atiku that the only thing he needed to do was to demand for a DNA test for “the Man Occupying Aso Rock”, insisting that he will give up his agitation for Biafra if he is found to be the original Buhari. His lieutenants were reported to have said that the embattled ex president of Sudan, A Bashir’s overthrow may have thrown a scare into the presidency. They cited the absence of vice president Yemi Osinbajo from Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting to the fact that they want those in the inner caucus to discuss the Al Bashir development. Only 21 ministers attended the FEC meeting.

While this allegation may be regarded as rabble rousing and dismissed in certain quarters, it has brought a new dimension to a case that has garnered increasing public interest, from skepticism to high interests.

But one of the respondents, INEC, had denied that they had any results in their server, referring to Atiku’s paraded results as fake. But in a Freudian admission, Buhari’s Campaign spokesperson, Festus Keyamo, had written to the DSS to arrest Atiku for hacking into INEC server, thereby giving credence that what was brought out came from INEC server. This has resulted in the proposed invitation of the Internet providers and administrators to confirm that the server was indeed INEC’s.

It should be noted that everything that was ever written on a site is stored permanently in the server even if it is deleted and the hard drive removed. The cloud technology, which has been employed by PDP in INEC data storage, ensures this.

The PDP had earlier insisted that there was no hacking of INEC server, that it was a whistle-blower within INEC that released the results to them. In this administrations, whistle-blowers are protected by law from prosecution.