Presidential election petition will not be determined by videos on social media- Keyamo

Chidi Samuel|

The spokesman of the Buhari presidential campaign organisation and one of the lawyers defending the President at the election petition tribunal, Festus Keyamo, has said videos circulating on social media will not play any role in determining the outcome of the petition pending before the tribunal.

According to Keyamo, the petition before the tribunal will only be determined by the provisions of the electoral act.

Keyamo was reacting to videos trending on social media on Thursday where some Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff discussed the planned to electronic transmission of results of the 2019.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Keyamo said while INEC may have planned to transmit the results electronically, what matters most is if it actually did.

He tweeted, “Without referring to any particular pending Election Petition, there’s a need to generally guide Nigerians not to gullibly fall for the fantasy created by any video circulating where INEC official(s) spoke of INEC’s plan to electronically transmit results before the elections.”

“The video(s) of some INEC official(s) expressing intention to electronically transmit results are only circulated for entertainment. That procedure is neither contained in the Electoral Act nor in INEC’s Guidelines. Courts are only guided by these documents and not such videos.

“Also, what you plan to do may be different from what you ACTUALLY DID. Assuming INEC planned to transmit electronically, the moment it said after the election that it did not do so, the matter ends there especially as the Electoral Act & the Guidelines do not allow it to do so.”

The presidential candidate of the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar is challenging the outcome of the presidential election won by President Muhammadu Buhari before the election tribunal.

Atiku, citing results he said, he got from the INEC server, claimed he defeated Buhari with over 1.6 million votes.

INEC has since dismissed the claim, saying the results paraded by Atiku was fabricated for the purpose of challenging the outcome of the presidential election at the tribunal.