The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council on Monday accused the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of having gained illegal access to the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with a view to planting fake election results.

The allegation is contained in a petition to the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), urging them “to use your good offices to investigate the hacking of and/or illegal tampering with the INEC server by the PDP.”

“The leadership of the PDP must be invited, interrogated and investigated and those identified as perpetrators must be arrested and prosecuted,” the petition signed by Festus Keyamo, SAN, FCIArb (UK), Director, Strategic Communications (Official Spokesperson),

APC Presidential Campaign Council, said:

“The PDP and its Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, have gone ahead to file an Election Petition against the clear victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and have repeated the same outlandish claim of having access to INEC’s server which shows that they have some purported results at their disposal giving “victory” to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar,” the petition said.

It added: “Sirs, we wish you to note that INEC’s server is the back end of electronic records of INEC. This is not INEC’s website but its server! Although the purported results have been conclusively shown by public engagements to be false and even ridiculous, especially as the total number of accredited voters is exactly equivalent to the purported votes of the APC and PDP candidates, this criminal claim of the PDP has revealed a few things:

“(a) It is now clear that some criminally-minded PDP operatives have access to the INEC server to be able to smuggle in fake results into that server.

“(b) The only means by which they could have access to the INEC server is by the criminal hacking of the server or through the criminal conspiracy of some INEC officials.”

The APC Presidential Campaign Council demanded that “the leadership of the PDP must be invited, interrogated and investigated and those identified as perpetrators must be arrested and prosecuted.”

“Opposition is healthy in a democracy but it is not a license for criminality and illegality. A country governed by laws cannot be blackmailed or cowed into indolence by the perceived underdog status of the opposition so as to condone such a blatant criminal claim by the PDP of having illegal access to INEC’s server,” it further said.

Update news