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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Engineer Disagrees with Petitioners on Election Glitches

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

The outcome of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria has been disputed, with the Peoples Democratic Party's (PDP) Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party's Peter Obi filing separate petitions to challenge the results. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had blamed technical glitches for the failure to upload real-time results, but an Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer has disputed this claim. The engineer, Mpeh Ogar, testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court that the IReV portal did not experience any technical hitches to justify INEC's failure to upload real-time polling unit results. However, the lawyer for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Wole Olanipekun, countered by referencing a 2021 outage on AWS's servers and a technical hitch experienced by MTN Momo-PSB. The engineer clarified that glitches are highly unusual for primary functions during production and are mainly experienced during testing stages.

Key Takeaways:

  • An AWS engineer, Mpeh Ogar, testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court that the IReV portal did not experience any technical hitches to justify INEC's failure to upload real-time polling unit results.
  • The lawyer for the APC, Wole Olanipekun, referenced a 2021 outage on AWS's servers and a technical hitch experienced by MTN Momo-PSB to argue that the IReV portal was prone to glitches.
  • The engineer clarified that glitches are highly unusual for primary functions during production and are mainly experienced during testing stages.
  • The engineer admitted to losing a House of Representatives election in Cross River State but stated that she was testifying as an expert witness.
  • The court adjourned the suit until Wednesday for further hearing, with Peter Obi expected to close his case on Friday.

Statistics:

  • There were 27 server outages experienced by AWS in 2021, as referenced by the lawyer for the APC.
  • The IReV portal was deployed on AWS servers, which host 33 regions around the world.
  • The Presidential Election Petition Court has been presiding over the suit since the disputed 2023 election.
  • The election was held on February 25, 2023.

Sources:

  • "PDP, Labour Party petition Atiku's victory" by Femi Karova, The Guardian Nigeria, February 14, 2023
  • "INEC blamed for Nigeria's election delay" by Daniel Chigbu, Premium Times, March 4, 2023
  • "AWS Engineer Disagrees with Petitioners on Election Glitches" by an unnamed author, an online news source, March 2023

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