A spokesman for the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation, Buba Galadima, has insisted that the result of the presidential election which saw President Muhammadu Buhari emerge as winner, is not only false but is also criminal.
He said this on Tuesday when he made an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today, in reaction to the claims by his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that their votes had exceeded that of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Mr Galadima, however, did not disclose the source of the information although the party had reportedly filed a petition earlier, in which it claimed that it had access to INEC’s server which allegedly showed that they surpassed the votes of the APC by about 1.6 million.
“INEC said what they wanted to say and in a democratic setting, we also have the right to disagree with INEC and produce evidence as to what has happened and it is part of our secret that when we reach the courtroom, we will show the world, not only Nigerians, that the elections were fraudulent and the announcement by INEC that Muhammadu Buhari won the presidential election is not only false but criminal,” Galadima said.
“With the records available to us and from what we have gathered from the field and the other sources, our candidate Atiku Abubakar was the one that had overwhelmingly won the confidence and the votes of Nigerians to become the President of Nigeria and that will not be in dispute when we reach the courtroom”.
In a counter-petition to the earlier claims, the APC Campaign Council had asked the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services to use their “good offices to investigate the hacking of and/or illegal tampering with the INEC server by the PDP”.
Galadima, however, stressed that the reaction of the party was an indication that they were jittery because according to him, they did not perform.
“They shouldn’t be jittery because they know that they didn’t perform. They know that they did not win the elections so they are resorting to blackmail and calling names.”
A Legal Practitioner, Uche Onu, who was also a guest on the programme, however, reacted to speculations that the petition of the APC would appear as an intimidation of the opposition.
According to him, it is the legal right of the aggrieved party to go to court with their grievances.
He, however, explained that it is a crime for anyone to unlawfully access a computer system or network to obtain information.
“The issue before the tribunal is different from this. The Cybercrime Act of 2015 makes it criminal for anybody that unlawfully accesses a computer system or network from anywhere and even prescribes punishment that is up to about five years imprisonment or 10 million Naira fine or both,” he said.
