Festus Keyamo Reacts To Video Making Rounds That The Presidential Election Was Rigged

Festus Keyamo, the spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress presidential campaign organization, has stated that the video making rounds on the internet that the Presidential election was rigged are not as important as the Electoral Act and the Independent National Electoral Commission guidelines.

Recall that the electoral body had declared the Presidential candidate of APC, Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the election against the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar and other contestants.

Atiku had however claimed that the results obtained from the server of INEC revealed that he scored a total of 18,356,732 votes, and Buhari 16,741,430 votes.

The opposition party also claimed that they are in possession of some documents which revealed that he won the election.

Atiku and his party decided to file a petition to challenge the victory of Buhari, with APC and INEC as co-respondents.

In their petition to the tribunal, PDP and Atiku deposed that some ad hoc staff and other INEC officials, relying on the training/instruction by the first respondent (INEC), transmitted the scores they got from the polling units to INEC server.

PDP listed 13 ad hoc staff of INEC who all testified that they, indeed, uploaded results from their polling units to the INEC server as instructed during their training.

Atiku, speaking through his lawyers at the tribunal led by Levi Uzoukwu (SAN), noted that the results he allegedly obtained from the INEC server were neither false, nor contrived, nor concocted.

Keyamo in his reaction to the video tweeted: “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.”

“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.”

“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 and the guidelines do not allow it to do so.”

“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”

“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.”

“The noise about electronic transmission of INEC results is akin to a student who wants to cheat in an exam and 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!”