EXCLUSIVE: Why Amazon Declined Subpoena To Testify In Peter Obi’s Case Against INEC, Tinubu

The Amazon Web Services, AWS did not show up to testify at the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja despite a subpoena (summon from the court) by the legal team of the presidential flag bearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, THE WHISTLER can authoritatively report.

AWS is the cloud platform that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, used to host its INEC Results Viewing Portal, IReV, to securely store scanned polling unit (PU) results of the 2023 general election uploaded from the 176,606 Polling Units across the country.

This was confirmed at one of the proceedings at the PEPC sittings, by INEC lead counsel, A.B. Mahmoud SAN.

Recall that during the presidential and national assembly election on February 25, the electoral umpire, in a statement, said there were “technical glitches” resulting in the failure to transmit Form EC8As of the presidential poll from polling units in realtime using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS machine.

But Obi’s legal team led by Dr Livy Uzoukwu SAN, had in a petition against INEC, President Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress, APC, maintained that the Commission deliberately shut out the IReV from receiving the scanned presidential results while allowing the national assembly scores to go through.

Obi’s team maintained that the IReV’s failure was orchestrated to discredit and suppress its client’s majority votes in the 2023 polls.

In their petition, they assured the court that they would rely on data from AWS, among other documents and witnesses including experts, to prove that the election was rigged in favour of President Bola Tinubu.

The team had last Friday completed its presentation of witnesses and evidence within the three weeks approved for them by the PEPC, chaired by Justice Haruna Tsammani.

One of those subpoenaed during the pre-hearing sessions to testify was Clarita Mpeh Ogah, a staff of Amazon.

During cross examination by an INEC lawyer, Ogah told the panel that the subpoena from the petitioners was directed to her personally and not Amazon.

She had told the court that she came to testify as an expert/cloud engineer and not “on the authority of AWS.”

Contradicting INEC’s explanation on transmission and the APC legal team, Ogah had told the court that “It is highly unusual for technical glitches to occur on primary functions of application in production. According to my report, there were no glitches on AWS during the February 25 presidential election.”

She also tendered, through Obi’s legal team, data she downloaded from AWS to prove her report.

Meanwhile, THE WHISTLER exclusively obtained a subpoena Form 23 (Duces Tecum Ad Testificandum) by the petitioners addressed to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Number One Victoria Island, Lagos Nigeria or Amazon Web Services (AWS) 13200 Woodland Park Rd, Hendon, VA 20171, United States.

The subpoena was dated 25th May, 2023, and had the stamp of the PEPC.

Subpoena Duces Tecum Ad Testificandum means the date and time the witness must attend court to give testimony and evidence.

But given the time allotted to Obi’s team, it implies that AWS did not come to give evidence even though a subpoena was addressed to the company.

An official at the Court of Appeal where the PEPC is domiciled told THE WHISTLER on condition of anonymity that the subpoena was not accepted by AWS because it was not properly addressed by Obi’s lawyers.

The official who pleaded anonymity said the petitioners’ lawyers did not properly address who and which department the court process should be served on since the international company is large even though it has a branch in Nigeria.

“Number one, Amazon said the subpoena was not properly addressed and that if they (Obi’s team) want to serve them, the company should be served through their email address and it will be attended to.

“Amazon is big. They have different offices, HR, Accounts” the official said.

For several days, our correspondent called the lead counsel of Obi and LP, Dr Livy Uzoukwu SAN, to confirm developments on the subpoena on AWS but his line was busy.

A text message was sent to his phone number but no reply has been sent back as of the time of this report.

THE WHISTLER also called one of the team members, Peter Afuba SAN, but he said he was not authorized to speak while referring our correspondent to reach the lead counsel.

However, the petitioner’s lead counsel had assured the press last Friday that the evidence he and the team have tendered were enough to instigate a turnaround in the results declared by INEC Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood.