The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed has defended the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload the results of the 2023 presidential election to its viewing portal immediately.
The Minister said INEC suspected a cyber attack and therefore withheld the results from going directly into the portal in order to preserve the data.
He added that the commission also proceeded to float an alternative platform while asking its technicians to investigate what happened to its original platform.
Mohammed denied the allegation that INEC refused to upload the results directly to the portal because it wanted to perpetrate fraud with the figures.
He also blamed the opposition parties for spreading the allegations of fraud against INEC due to their ignorance of how the process works.
OsunDaily News reports the Minister was quoted to have made the clarification while speaking with some international media outlets in Washington DC on Monday.
“Under our laws today, management of election results is manual and the court has ruled that INEC has the exclusive right to determine the mode of election, its collation and transmission,” he said.
“What happened on the 25th of February was that INEC observed that the results of the presidential elections were not being viewed. INEC, suspecting a cyber attack, withheld the uploading of the results to preserve the integrity of the data.
“It immediately proceeded to float an alternative platform while asking its technicians to investigate what happened to its original portal.”
Buhari Delivered A Free And Fair Election
Speaking further, Lai Mohammed said President Muhammadu Buhari fulfilled his promise of delivering a credible election with the 2023 polls.
The minister said Buhari created a level-playing ground for the elections to take place and prevented security agencies from being used to intimidate opponents.
“Proof of this resolution is that the president’s party lost the presidential election in Katsina, his home state. Equally, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, lost in his state, Lagos, while the chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, lost in Nasarawa state to the Labour Party,” Mohammed was quoted as saying.
“The director-general of the campaign organization of our party also lost to PDP in Plateau state. Nothing gives this election more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our bigwigs come from,” he added.
