Hitler Nwala, a digital forensic expert, on Thursday, testified at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deleted all the results of the presidential elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the guise of preparing for the March 18, 2023 governorship election.
Information Nigeria reports that Nwala, a witness of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar submitted a report of his investigation carried out on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) through the petitioners’ counsel, Chris Uche.
Recall the PDP and Atiku are protesting the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President by the Independent National Electoral Commission at the Presidential Elections Petition Court.
During the resumed hearing of their petition, the 26th witness’ report was subsequently admitted as evidence and marked as exhibits despite objections by the respondents in the matter.
According to Hitler, his findings show that the election results of the Federal Capital Territory during the presidential elections were deliberately deleted from the BVAS machine.
Bwala told the court that “he worked on 110 BVAS machines which formed the primary source of information for his forensic report.”
He said that the machines inspected were only those from the FCT and that he didn’t know at what point the results were deleted on the machines.
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Upon cross-examination by Abubakar Mahmoud, counsel to INEC, the witness said that he attached a standard device to the BVAS machine to carry out his investigation.
INEC, however challenged his allegation, insisting that because he did not inspect all the machines, his claim was wrong but the witness maintained his stance.
Mahmoud further asked the witness if he was aware that inspecting only 110 machines out of 3,163 that were deployed in the FCT amounted to only 3.4 per cent of the total number of BVAS deployed in the FCT and 0.06 per cent of BVAS deployed nationwide.
The counsel further presented to the court, for demonstration, a BVAS machine which he asked the witness to access and show proof that the data was deleted.
Responding, the witness said it was professionally wrong for him to access the machine directly.
“We don’t access the source of evidence directly. We extract the evidence and access it from another source.”
“If we access it now, the content will change and will tamper with the evidence. It is professionally wrong to tamper with evidence that will be relied upon in a court of law,” Nwala stated.
While insisting the BVAS must be inspected in court,the chairman of the five-man panel, Justice Haruna Tsammani notified the counsel that the allotted time for conducting his cross-examination had elapsed.
Justice Haruna Tsammani however adjourned the hearing of the petition until Friday, 23rd June.
