According to Vanguard, Mr. Anthony Chinwo, a software engineer, testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja on Thursday in the case filed by the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Gregory Obi, to challenge the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.
Chinwo, the petitioners’ second witness (PW-2), told the court that while he was unfamiliar with the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), he had adequate knowledge of the operation of back-end servers.
Answering cross-examination questions, the witness, who also described himself as an architect, informed the court that he did not play a significant part in the election.
He acknowledged that Amazon Web Services (AWS), which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) employed for the general elections, was one of the most reputable cloud computing service providers, with 99.9% security assurance.
He stated that AWS is typically used by businesses and individuals who are concerned about the security of their data.
However, he stated that deploying AWS is one thing, but utilising it is quite another.
Continuing, the PW-2, while acknowledging that he was unable to vote on election day, stated that he was not an Amazon employee.
Mr. Chinwo said, “My lords, I conducted election analysis using the publicly available INEC Application Programming Interface (API). I used them to get all of the electoral information that was accessible. I did it gradually over the course of the election.
“Because I am not an INEC employee, I am unable to determine the number of software components that comprised the software that INEC used for the 2023 election.”
As expected, this development elicited reactions on Twitter as it was shared by Vanguard on their official handle.
A Twitter user identified as Biodun Adeyanju said, “If you read the story, you will discover that the admitted evidence is not credible enough. He’s not a staff member of Amazon or INEC, nor does he know the number of software programmes used by INEC.
“Backend analysis that is not authorised can’t stand the heat of judgement. The law is not moral.”
Nnennia said, “This man was more prepared for the courts than the election. I think he knew what was going to happen.”
