Forensic Expert To Tribunal – INEC Intentionally Erased Presidential Poll Results From BVAS In FCT

• Insists Commission had no reasons for such action

BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been accused of deliberately deleting all the results of presidential election from the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the guise of preparation for the March 18 governorship election.

The allegation came from a Digital Forensic Expert, Hitler Nwuala, at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) sitting in Abuja on Thursday.

Nwuala said having gone through about 110 BVAS devices used during the presidential polls in the nation’s capital, he discovered that all the machines examined had their data deliberately erased by the electoral umpire.

Presented as the 26th witness of Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the February 25 poll, the forensic expert insisted that INEC had no reasons to delete the presidential election result data from BVAS machines used in the FCT because gubernatorial elections did not hold in the territory.

Nwuala, who is a subpoenaed witness to the Tribunal, made the claims while being cross examined by counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), maintaining that given a deviation in the small sample space of 110 samples already analyzed, the probability is that; “it is likely to increase as the number of sample size increases”.

He informed the Tribunal that having “worked on 110 BVAS machines which formed the primary source of information for his forensic report”, findings indicated that the FCT results for the presidential poll were intentionally removed from the BVAS machine

Acknowledging that the inspected machines were only those from the FCT, the expert witness said it was difficult to ascertain when the Commission decided to wipe out results from the machines.

Under further cross-examination by the INEC lawyer, Nwuala explained that he attached a standard device to the BVAS machine to carry out his investigation.

In maintaining his position, the witness rejected the Electoral umpire’s assertion that since all the machines were not inspected by him, it was wrong for him to make the claims in court.

The INEC counsel, who sought to have a demonstration in open court, produced a BVAS machine and requested the witness to access it and show proof that the polls’ data were deleted.

But the expert witness told the Tribunal that it was professionally wrong for him to access the machine directly, explaining thus; “We don’t access the source of evidence directly. We extract the evidence and access it from another source.

“If we access it now, the content will change and will tamper with the evidence. It is professionally wrong to tamper with evidence that will be relied upon in a court of law.”

Though the electoral Commission pressed for the BVAS to be inspected in open court, the Tribunal Chairman, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani overruled their Counsel with the explanation that the time allotted for cross-examining the witness had expired.

On his part, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), counsel representing President Bola Tinubu, alerted the Tribunal of disparities contained in the forensic reports on the numbers of BVAS machines the witness claimed to have examined.

According to the Senior lawyer, the report may similarly be filled with errors, a claim debunked by the witness who informed the Tribunal that the differences detected in the figures were mere typographical errors.

Earlier, in continuation of their legal battle against INEC’s declaration of President Bola Tinubu as winner of the February 25 poll, Atiku and the PDP tendered certified exhibits in four more States of the Federation.

Among the tendered exhibits are certified true copies of INEC’S form EC8A used by the electoral body during the presidential election while other sensitive documents were tendered in 20 Local Government Areas of Ogun; 17 Local Government Areas of Ondo; 27 Local Government Areas of Jigawa; and 20 Local Government Areas of Rivers State.

Despite stiff opposition by the three respondents in the petition, INEC, President Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the exhibits being admitted, the Tribunal overruled them and went ahead to admit them.

Meanwhile, led in his evidence-in-chief by lead Counsel to the petitioners, Atiku Abubakar and the PDP, Chris Uche (SAN), the expert witness told the Tribunal that he examined 110 BVAS machines as sample material from the FCT and submitted a report of his investigation carried out on the BVAS.

With the report subsequently admitted as evidence and marked as exhibits despite objections by the respondents in the matter, the petitioners further tendered a certificate of compliance to indicate that the report has complied with the Evidence Act.

The PEPT thereafter adjourned further hearing into the petition to Friday, June 23, 2023.