Tribunal admits AWS Cloud Trial Log on IReV as evidence in Obi’s petition, as INEC closes case in Tinubu’s defence

CHIGOZIE  IKPO , Abuja

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) on Tuesday, admitted as evidence, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Trial Log on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s electronic transmission system, deployed for the February 25 elections.

The log, which also shows the performance of the IReV portal was tendered alongside the certificate of compliance, by Counsel for INEC, A. B. Mahmoud (SAN), through the commission’s witness, Dr. Lawrence Bayode, INEC Deputy Director, Information and Communication Department.

The Presiding Justice of the Court, Justice Haruna Tsammani admitted the documents as exhibits as there were no objections.

During cross-examination by counsel for Tinubu and Shetimma, Chief Wole Olanipekun, Dr. Bayode told the court that the Authenticity of elections by INEC are recorded in form EC8As and EC8Bs adding that blurred documents downloaded from the rom INEC IReV portal, will not affect the physical results as recorded in form EC8As.

He said he was e naira project of President Muhammadu Buhari, launched in the 2021 which was taken off the Google Play store for the purpose of fixing the technological glitches.

He However stated that elections at the polling units are concluded when the Presiding Officer sorts out the ballots, counts, announces openly to the hearing of their agents, snaps that image with the BVAS machine and uploads it to the IReV.

In further cross-examination by counsel for the LP, Mr. Patrick Ikweto (SAN), Dr. Bayode told the court that the Cloud trail log is obtained from our account on the AWS showing the activity of the patches deployed on the e-transmission application on AWS to fix the glitch that was encountered on the election day on the INEC application.

Mr. Ikweto referred him to a test report on the INEC server on February 22, 2023, indicating vulnerabilities in the system, but the witness insisted that the report tendered by the party was a functionality report on security and not on performance.

Dr. Bayode said the functionality test is to test if the system is doing what it has been designed to do while the performance test is to test how the system will behave under heavy usage, which is on the back-end to ensure that the system is secure.

He said those issues were resolved and indicated in the report, insisting that the e-transmission server was not vulnerable.

The witness said the Hard Copy of the form EC8As will not be different from the results and the senior lawyer showed him blurred copies of INEC Certified documents on the IReV portal which he admitted not to see anything in them, but said it does not affect the final results.

The petition PEPC/CA/03/2023 was filed by Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP), challenging the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the February 25 poll.

Respondents in the petition are INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President, Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC) listed as 1st to 4th respondents.
Counsel for INEC, A. B. Mahmoud (SAN), in. closing his case, also tendered the following documents;
1. Certified True Copies (CTC) of the 3rd & 4th Respondent’s letter dated 6th July.
2. CTC of INEC regulations and guidelines for the conduct of the election.
3. CTC of Respondent’s manual for election officials, 2023.
4. CTC of the judgement of the Federal High Court, in suit FHC/Cs/1454/2022, Labour Party vs INEC

5. CTC of Respondent’s letter dated March 10 2023 with the approved procedure for issuance of CTC of documents attached.
6. CTC of declaration of results from EC8E for the 2023 presidential election.
Justice Tsammani admitted all the documents as exhibits and adjourned proceedings till tomorrow, July 5 for Tinubu and Shettima to open their defence.

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