'Seun Ibukun-Oni, Abuja
DAILY COURIER - The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi has stoked controversy on the forces behind the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, servers failure during the 2023 presidential election.
He said the ‘establishment of criminality’ made the INEC servers not work during the last last general elections.
The Labour Party presidential candidate's position contradicts the electoral umpire INEC's position which blamed unexpected complex system error encountered during upload of presidential results.
Obi stated this, while addressing the issues of the 2023 elections, including the IREV servers, in Canada during the weekend.
The Labour Party flagbearer in 2023 said people must intensify engagement with all the stakeholders to make the system work.
The former Anambra State governor explained that Amazon testified there were no glitches recorded globally on the day of the presidential election.
He said: “Where did we go wrong in the last election? We didn’t go wrong anywhere. We did the right things.
“But as I can always tell people: when you bring a change, you fight all those who live off the old order. They don’t go away; they gang up. And don’t think it’s a straight race to remove an establishment.
“It’s a long-distance journey anywhere in the world. Go and check anywhere, whether you are looking at what happened in India, with Mandela in South Africa, or America. No change has happened overnight, it takes time.
“I urge all of you, if you really want change, we have just begun. We just have to continue from where we are.
“The INEC server was the same as the establishment. The server would not work because it was the establishment that made it so it wouldn’t work. It’s ours to continue to say that it would work. But there was no glitch.
“Amazon came and said there was no glitch. Amazon glitch is noticed globally – it’s recorded globally. And at that period, we brought down an Amazon person who said this is the number of glitches we have had since inception.
“And there was none that it reported that day. We know it didn’t occur. It was the glitch of the establishment criminality that was in the system. And we must one day make it work,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) provided answer to the reason for the election day hitch during the 2023 presidential election impacted negatively on the outcome of the poll.
The disclosure was contained in a 526 pages document titled: "Report of the 2023 General Election" released on Friday February 23, by the commission's spokesperson, Sam Olumekun.
Contained in section 9.6. under Uploading of
Presidential Election
Result on pages 160-162 of the report, the commission while maintaining it stance that despite the glitch the presidential election was credible blamed unexpected complex system error encountered during upload of presidential results.
Explaining the complexity, it noted that while the federal houses of representatives across the country were mapped into designated states ditto for the Senatorial districts, the presidential results had a single route without a backend map on the available protocol resulting in error reports during result upload.
To save the website, potential for malicious cyberattacks, the Commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System.
"The 2023 General Election was generally peaceful and orderly nationwide. Most of the challenges encountered in the pre-election, election and post-electon periods were discussed in the preceding sections of this Report. However, a key challenge that impacted on the public perception of the election and elicited widespread commentary is the failure to upload Polling Unit results of the presidential election to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time at the close of polls on Saturday 25th February 2023.
"To begin with, it is important to note that the IReV portal is one of the most significant innovations introduced by the Commission prior to the 2023 General Elections to promote the integrity and transparency of the electoral process. As a public-facing website, the IReV portal shows the images of the original Polling Unit result sheets as recorded in Form EC8A.
"The operational methodology and the
concept behind the upload of results to the IReV for public viewing is quite simple. At the end of polls, Polling Unit results (Form EC8As) are scanned and uploaded to the IReV by the Presiding Officer(s). These results are then available for viewing to the public and all stakeholders. The system, which was first deployed during Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-electon in August 2020 and tested in 105 subsequent elections, including three (3) of-cycle governorship elections, has tremendously improved public confidence in the integrity and transparency of the Commission’s
result management process.
"The challenge of uploading the PU
presidential election results on the IReV after the presidential and NASS elections on 25th February 2023 was unique. As voting ended across the country and POs began the process of uploading the images of the PU result sheets of the elections for the various constituencies around 4:00pm, the Commission began to receive reports that attempts to upload presidential election result sheets was failing. Following these reports, the Commission immediately engaged with its field officials for details in order to understand, and trace the origin, source, scale and magnitude of the problem across the result management ecosystem to devise appropriate solutions.
"In the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the
Senate and House of Representatives
elections through the Election Result
Modules. However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system. Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originate from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access application resources correctly. Further interrogation of the Election Result Modules indicated that the system is encountering an unexpected configuration problem in mapping the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the participating Polling Units.
"Due to the complex, sensitive and critical nature of the systems and the real potential for malicious cyberattacks, the Commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System. In the process of resolving the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV was able to query and detect the base States for uploading the PU result sheets based on the mapping of all Senatorial District and Federal Constituency elections to the respective 36 States of the Federation and the FCT as established in the database structure deployed within the system" the report clarified.
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