All Is Set That In the dispute over the presidential poll, five INEC ad hoc staff will testify against Tinubu and APC.

 It has been approved that five ad hoc staff members of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will serve as special witnesses in the petition filed by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), challenging the results of the 2023 presidential election.

The INEC ad hoc staff, who participated in the conduct of the disputed presidential election results, were subpoenaed to appear before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC.

Atiku, who came second in the presidential contest on February 25, had in the joint petition he filed with his party, alleged that the election was rigged in favour of President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. In his 66-page petition, the former vice president accused the electoral commission of installing a third-party device he said was used to intercept and switch results of the presidential election in favour of the APC and its candidate, Bola Tinubu. He further alleged that INEC had, before the election, redeployed its in-house ICT expert, Mr Chidi Nwafor, and replaced him with an IT consultant that helped it to install the third-party mechanism.

According to Atiku, the IT consultant, Mr Suleiman Farouk, ensured that the device was intermediated between the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and the IRev Portal, which is known as Device Management System, DMS.

He told the court that the DMS was the software that allowed INEC's IT Security Consultant, Mr Farouk, to remotely control, monitor and filter data transmitted from the BVAS devices to the electronic collation system and the IRev platform. "The 1st Respondent, INEC, engaged an appointee of the 2nd Respondent (Tinubu) to man and oversee the sensitive ICT department of the 1st Respondent for the purpose of the election. "" The petitioners contend and shall lead evidence to show that contrary to the original design of the BVAS machine to upload data directly to the electronic collation system and the IReV portal, the 1st Respondent contrived and installed an intervening third-party device (Device Management System) which, in its ordinary usage, is meant to secure and administer the 1st Respondent's technological ecosystem for the elections but as it relates to the presidential election, was used to intercept the results, quarantine and warehouse same, and filter them before releasing same to the IReV portal.

"The petitioners allege that the 1st Respondent manipulated the Election results in favour of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents using the Device Management System. To support their claim, the petitioners will provide expert evidence to demonstrate the key elements of the 1st Respondent's Information and Communications Technology (ICT), including the BVAS Android Device produced by Emperor Technologies China and provided to the 1st Respondent by Activate Nigeria Limited." the petitioners added.