Electronic Transmission Is Neither Contained In Electoral Act, Nor INEC’s Guidelines – Keyamo
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Festus Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, has said that the videos circulating all over social media showing how February 23, 2019, presidential election was allegedly rigged are of consequence because they do not align with the provisions of the law.
Keyamo in a series of tweets on Thursday warned that whatever video or electronic evidence that some may claim to have, do not align with the electoral act nor do they align with guidelines as stipulated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Keyamo tweeted:
The noise about electronic transmission of INEC results is akin to a student who wants to cheat in an exam & enters the hall with prepared answers, not noticing that the set questions are not exactly framed as expected. So, when he’s later told he failed, he says it’s IMPOSSIBLE!
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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1. Without referring to any particular pending Election Petition, there’s a need to generally guide Nigerians not to gullibly fall for the fantasy created by any video circulating where INEC official(s) spoke of INEC’s plan to electronically transmit results before the elections
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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2. The video(s) of some INEC official(s) expressing intention to electronically transmit results are only circulated for entertainment. That procedure is neither contained in the Electoral Act nor in INEC’s Guidelines. Courts are only guided by these documents and not such videos
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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3. Also, what you plan to do may be different from what you ACTUALLY DID. Assuming INEC planned to transmit electronically, the moment it said after the election that it did not do so, the matter ends there especially as the Electoral Act & the Guidelines do not allow it to do so
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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4. In anticipation of the electronic transmission, some crooks concocted fictitious results and perhaps in connivance with certain INEC insiders (or by hacking) tried to upload those results into the server. The fact that electronic transmission didn’t happen destroyed their plan
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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5. The irony is that the real cheats are the ones struggling to create a narrative that they were cheated; the real crooks are the ones struggling to convince everyone that the system is crooked; those who actually planned to steal the people’s mandate are the ones crying foul
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) April 25, 2019
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INEC had declared Muhammadu Buhari of the APC, winner of the presidential election with 15,191,847 votes, as against PDP’s Atiku Abubakar’s 11,262,978 votes.
However, the Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku claimed that some results purportedly obtained from the INEC server showed that Atiku actually scored a total of 18,356,732 votes, and Buhari 16,741,430 votes.
Both PDP and Atiku claim to be in possession of certain documents proving that he won the presidential election overwhelmingly with 1.6m votes.
The PDP and Atiku have since filed a petition, precisely on March 20, to challenge President Buhari’s reelection, with APC and INEC as co-respondent.