How Can INEC Server Get Hacked To Death -By Micheal A. Adeniyi

I have watched what is playing out at the independent electoral commission (INEC) collation secretariat at the ICC carefully and I can say that a process lacking accountability and transparency is a sham. INEC server and iRev is meant to be a verification center for collation of result.

Across the world, there has been reports of cyber crime such as hacking, cyber hijack and there has also been top notch cyber security system as well. Over the weekend has been barrage of accusation and support for BVAS bypass and the many excuse of hack attempt by hackers as the reason why INEC jettison the use of iREv systems, and this is being said to be why iRev cannot be used during the collation of result of the just concluded election by members of the ruling party APC, the APC was a party privy to the arrangement of BVAS and iRev, in fact, it took the party days lecturing people on how BVAS to iRev will be used to verify numbers of voters and even results from polling unit.

Just this morning, I have seen a number of justification by some few Nigerians about how the INEC server was hacked, this politically motivated people are indirectly saying that iRev must not be a requirement when indeed what the online information collation does is to ensure accountability and accuracy from all polling units across the country. If this excuse stands then what must have happened to the number of servers used by the federal government, has out national ID servers been hacked also.

First of all, INEC got a budget of 305bn and a report of hacking will mean the election cannot stand, because a weak cyber verification process meant information computed on it cannot stand. No political party has its own BVAS nor does any party have INEC unique paper which can be used in fraudulent manner to upload fake result, if that can happen, trust me what happened offline is worse, if parties have INEC log books then they rigged as well. I have seen member of the ruling party say there was attempt to hack INEC server 167 times, my question is, are the hackers successful in hacking it. If yes, anything on iRev becomes a scam, also did political parties say their votes have been tampered with on paper and not uploaded in reel time on INEC server? In such case the reality is checked! Did they have a request for manual cross checking accepted? If NO, something is wrong. INEC as an umpire should be able to do a valid check when collating. This is a standard procedure in computing.

Why did INEC promised a real time reel of results from polling units when it will not have to use the process, why did it take funds to create servers and ensure cyber security, why did it fail to use a process it got funds for or is INEC telling us that it’s IT department lacks the power to provide cyber security. I may not know what definition of hack is, but many of you use a bank account that has never been hacked, and very well, you visually track all your expenditure against your bank balance to confirm if there has been an unauthorized withdrawal, over charging and all sort. Why is it now that grown up who own a bank apps running on a server believe that INEC server was hackable.

The goal of a free, fair and transparent election has been defeated without the iRev, also, if truly every party agents have a result why not compare what is at hand to what is on the server to confirm if truly hacked, or you mean other political parties are not privy of the number of votes they got in the election and that they have no right to object to an inaccurate data?

There is nothing like INEC server hacked to death, there is nothing like that, the election has not been transparent and cannot be said to be credible, when the perimeter for credibility has been removed, this leaves us with the question; Will the President ensure credibility and accountability or will it throw both under the bus as he winds down his tenure. What was witnessed by political parties in this election can be described as procedural failure which now cast aspersions on the whole process.

Party agents have complained that people are disenfranchised and that some party engaged in a “boost your loss spree” by altering votes in every polling units to shore up with winners, at least. If the INEC server has truly been hacked to death, if truly a system that takes data from BVAS machines only can be said to be hacked, then what happen to manual verification by party agents with records of votes, are they saying some political party have their own BVAS? If that is the case, I call on President Buhari to cancel this election and ensure a more secure process with the iRev server which serve as the only verification platform for the nation.