THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is now replacing all the servers in its headquarters and offices in all states of the federation and Abuja, “in a desperate bid to obliterate the actual Presidential election results transmitted from the polling centres across the nation.”
According to the main opposition party, this is completely reprehensible and further exposes the culpability of INEC in the manipulation and rigging of the 2019 Presidential election.
A statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary in Abuja on Monday, the party has been well briefed on how the INEC leadership and officials of the Buhari Presidency became jittery and resorted to the desperate measure after they realised that the servers have information of Atiku Abubakar’s victory at the election.
The statement added: “Our party also has details of how the INEC leadership and the Presidency agents procured and detailed computer experts to the commission’s offices to switch the servers, mutilate vital information in the system and attempt to erase all trails of transmitted results to the main server.
“Moreover, our party has been informed about how the INEC leadership, several weeks after the election, used some compromised officials of the commission to manipulate voter registers in some states by ticking names of individuals who did not participate in the Presidential election, as having voted. This is with the view to using such to cover the fictitious results it wrote for the APC.
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“What INEC and the Buhari Presidency do not understand is that computer software and applications leave traces, signatures as well as footmark. Forensic investigation of the system will reveal the real votes transmitted from the polling centres, which show Atiku Abubakar as the winner of the election.”
The PDP, therefore, insisted on forensic examination of all relevant documents and equipment used for the Presidential election.
“Our party will continue to be at alert as we stand with Nigerians to reclaim our stolen mandate at the tribunal and no amount of manipulations by INEC will detract from this national resolve,” it added.
In a separate statement, the PDP also alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari’s private voyage out of the country without transmitting power, as required by the constitution, is an act of dereliction, which confirms that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Buhari Presidency are not interested in governance but seeks to vacate our constitutional order and foist an authoritarian system on our country.
It added: “Such dereliction of office can only come from leaders, who do not have respect for the people they governed but always muscling their way to power through intimidation, harassment as well as official manipulations, as witnessed in the rigging of the February 23 Presidential election by the APC.
“Moreover, Mr President’s abandoning of governance, particularly at this critical time when our nation is facing grave security and economic challenges, signposts the level of impunity and recklessness that will characterize our nation in the next four years, if the stolen Presidential mandate is not retrieved from the APC.
“What else, besides an authoritarian propensity, can explain why the Buhari Presidency relegated our Constitutional Order by declaring the application of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which directs that the President transmits power whenever he is travelling out of the country on vacation, as a mere “convention.”
“Authoritarian tendencies are usually characterised by absolute lack of trust on other government functionaries, which could likely explain the failure to transmit power to the Vice President. Such proclivity can also lead to a sequestering of institutions of government, if not checked.
“The import of this relegation of Section 145 is also a clear absence of a constitutional command structure which leaves our nation at the mercy of the extremely corrupt, vicious and anti-people cabal with whom President Buhari presided over the most corrupt and most incompetent administration, which wrecked our economy, divided our nation and opened her up for escalated insecurity.
“Such dereliction at the high levels emboldens bandits, bolsters insurgents and fuels cruel acts such as extra-judicial killing, illegal arrests, detention of innocent citizens, constitutional violations, attack on institutions of democracy as well as reckless looting of our national treasury by members of the cabal because they know that ‘nothing will happen.’
The PDP, therefore, urged Nigerians to unite in condemning this act of impunity in the interest of our nation even as they earnestly await the retrieval of the stolen Presidential mandate at the tribunal.
“Our nation, is in dire need of a legitimate, people-oriented, responsible and responsive government that will foster respect for rule of law as well as due regard to other arms and institutions of government, particularly the judiciary and the legislature, in ensuring the general wellbeing and security of all Nigerians,” the party declared.