The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu has said the result of the just concluded 2023 presidential election came as a shock to many people.
Shehu during an interview on Arise TV on Thursday morning said his party, the All Progressives Congress was not given any chance of winning the presidential election because some people had taken to the digital space to give the election victory to a particular political party.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has since declared Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress as the winner of the election.
“If you’re talking about assumptions that people have made, I am not even sure our party was given the chance of winning the election, especially if people had taken to the digital media to read the political temperature in the country.
“The digital space has been occupied by people of a particular point of view and dashed away the election to a given political party.
“I think the result also came as a shock to many people.”
Speaking on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, Shehu admitted that there were glitches with the BVAS. He, however, added that it performed excellently well in helping to rig out multiple voting.
He said, “Now the thing there is what is the BVAS equipment supposed to do, it is to accredit voters before they do the exercise and I want to say that the new equipment has done this so excellently that it has helped the country for the first time to rig the process of multiple voting and fake voters and people who are not registered who just walk in and just do the exercise.”
He said despite attempts to attack the server, Nigeria ended up with the most improved election.
He also added that they were not disappointed that there were millions of attempts to hack into the server.
“Yes, there were glitches with the BVAS because the second aspect of it is supposed to transmit results to the main server, it failed to do this not because INEC was unwilling or the government didn’t want this to happen but you know all of the things that happened.
“The minister of digital economy, Professor Pantami announced that 16 million attacks were made on the particular day of election. Five million times people had attempted to hack so the thing was that there was a grand plan possibly informed from outside or within in case there was sufficient capacity in Nigeria to hack.
“We are not disappointed that 16 million times they had tried to hack; the important thing is that the integrity of the election was preserved so therefore we ended up with the most improved election that we have seen so far.”
