The Joint Forum of Presidential candidates and Chairmen of 60 political parties that took part in the last Presidential election have said that before the conduct of the 2019 Presidential election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) informed political parties that it will not be using electronic transmission of result for the election because there was no legal instrument backing it.
The forum, therefore, asked the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party to stop heating up the polity with the server controversy which they say is unnecessary a deliberate ploy by the opposition to destroy the integrity of the nation’s electoral process
Addressing a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday, Chairman of the Forum of Presidential candidates, Alhaji Shittu Muhammed said it was out of place for the PDP to be insisting on inspecting INEC server.
“The needless controversy over the INEC Server would have been lawful as it would have been mandatory for the Commission to deploy the server. We are aware that INEC had run pilots on electronic transmission of results. It had informed us that these pilots were deployed in Anambra, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections.
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“However, INEC informed all political parties in the election following the withholding of assent by the President that it would not deploy the electronic transmission of results since it would not be lawful to do so.
“We must inform Nigerians now that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was represented in those meetings and we do not know why they are heating up the polity with the server story.
“This INEC Server controversy is a deliberate ploy to destroy the integrity of our electoral process. Can the so-called results from the server be referred to as credible where INEC could not have legitimately transmitted results of the Presidential or any of the other elections electronically?