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Hallelujah, somebody? I understand that the missing servers that have been the bone of contention between Atiku Abubakar, Presidential candidate of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Muhammadu Buhari, Presidential candidate of All Progressives’ Congress (APC), have been found at Deeper Life campground, Mowe, Ogun State, located at Kilometre 42 on the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway.
Someone whose name I don’t want to mention here told me so. But before we get into the detail or story of how he found them, because he is the one who is making such claim, let us, first of all, do a recap of how we got here.
As you well know, Atiku had alleged that he won the last general election by some margin of about 2 million votes although the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which gave the victory to Buhari with a margin of about 4 million votes, does not agree that he did.
Atiku claimed to have got his figures from the INEC server which Festus Keyamo (SAN), the spokesman for the Presidential Campaign Council, had earlier claimed that he and his cohorts had illegally hacked into to obtain the spurious figures of votes which they were bandying about. Atiku went to court in an attempt to reclaim what he sees as his stolen mandate. In the course of it all, he asked the court to compel INEC to give him access to the server so that he can prove the point he’s been making all along.
So far, the court has refused to play ball with him on that score. INEC too has refused, insisting that it has no such server, that it did not use any server during the election, that the whole counting from card readers and the voters’ cards were done manually by the late Chike Obi, the world-acclaimed Nigeria’s Father of Mathematics.
That’s where things stand at the moment. It raises two fundamental questions, one for Atiku and PDP, and one for Keyamo, Buhari and APC. If, as INEC said, there was no server and that it did not see or use any, where then did you, Atiku, get the serial numbers of Mac computers you were quoting? A reverse of the question for you, Keyamo, Buhari and APC would be: if INEC’s claim is anything to go by, how did you come about your claim of Atiku and his cohorts illegally hacking into INEC server? Which server were you talking about? The one INEC said it didn’t have?
Brothers and Sisters in Crisis, that is the stage where we are now. And, as the court pleases, answers to those questions will one day be given, one way or the other. If not now, then later. But right now I am being told a different story by the fellow who claimed to have found the servers at Deeper Life Campground.
He said that what INEC officials, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and Iginla, had in mind when they were speaking about server was to ask Deeper Life servers to help them with the job of collating and compiling the results because they (Deeper Life servers) are morally disciplined and dependable to deliver on such national assignment. But somehow, for reasons best known to them, Yakubu and co. never got to asking them to do so either before or after the election.
I was made to understand also that, contrary to the allegation making the rounds from the opposition party that Keyamo asked the police and DSS (Department of State Security) to arrest Atiku and other PDP bigwigs for hacking into INEC server, that he, actually, issued no such statement. They said he was actually rehearsing the song, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, for this year’s Christmas Carol, when some lazybones somewhere overheard him use the word “Hark” and thought they heard “hack” or “hacking” and went about spreading non-existent rumour.
The song, as you must have been told, was written by Charles Wesley in 1739 when he was looking for a slow and solemn music to celebrate the occasion, unlike the gbam gbam dim dim (fast tempo) church music of today. But it was adapted by George Whitefield and others while its present tune was composed by Felix Mendelssohn.
As a matter of fact, the word Keyamo used while practising the song was “hark”, not hack. But detractors, dem no go die beta, turned it upside down and claimed he said “hack” or “hacking.” Don’t tell me you don’t know the people I am talking about. They are people like me who don’t know the difference between the two words. But come o, do you mean that we have reached a stage in our computer wizardry where we can now hack into angels singing? That will be the day!
Let’s not worry too much about that in any case. A patriotic citizen claimed to have discovered the missing servers at Deeper Life campground. The fellow who narrated the incident said he was at the church programme when he noticed something which many worshippers and seekers who thronged the place did not see. He discovered that in-between the programmes while meals are being served either in the morning, afternoon or night, a fellow going by the name of “moderator” would come up to ask for those who have not gotten food to raise their hands. Following his enquiry from the pulpit, many hands would go up in various halls of the tent of meeting. And, he would say: “Servers, I can see many hands up in Halls 9, 8, 3, 4, 2 and I. Please, hurry up and take food to them. And, let’s do that fast because the next programme is about to start. Thank you.”
Brothers and Sisters in Crisis, I didn’t know what to make of this fellow’s narration or story. But after I came out of the shock, I managed to ask: what is the connection between Deeper Life servers and the server that Atiku Abubakar is talking about?
“So, it is not those kind of servers that INEC and Atiku are talking or quarreling about?”, he asked. I was so annoyed that initially I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what reply to give to his question.
He shrugged his shoulders and said: “forgive me, if I got it wrong. In any case, I think it would have made more sense to me, and perhaps, to everyone of us, and served us better, if those kind of servers were the ones employed to act as either INEC returning or collating officers in the last election. I mean, there would have been no need for INEC and Atiku and APC to continue to argue whether there was anything like server or not, whether it was snatched at gunpoint or hacked at gum (?) point.”
Having heard that, I was no longer interested in continuing with the conversation. I mean, how can you be in Nigeria of today and not know the difference between human servers and electronic server? How can the fellow mistake innocent and dutiful servers who were busy making sure that everybody ate, no matter how small, at a religious gathering, for electronic/computer server? How can he compare them with an electronic server lying idle somewhere simply because those who were supposed to make use of it were not willing to do their job? I wondered.
