SR-In a press statement released to the media Thursday, DAAR Communications Plc., parent company of African Independent Television (AIT), alleged that their recent AIT Online presidential opinion poll was maliciously compromised in favor of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari.
DAAR Communications Plc. stated that the polls were doctored by hackers connected to the APC, and discredited the survey, which was taken down from the site abruptly.
“General Mohammed Buhari had taken a massive lead in the online poll being conducted by Africa Independent Television’s website where he led President Goodluck Jonathan by 77% to 21% prompting the technical team of the AIT poll to conduct an integrity test on the results at midnight,” the statement read. DAAR Communications and AIT, who have been accused of being biased toward President Jonathan, further claimed that the team’s suspicions were confirmed by a test of votes polled after the poll’s shutdown. “Suspicions that the poll was compromised where [sic] first muted when it emerged the number of unique IP addresses was significantly less than the number of votes polled,” DAAR Communications said. “This suggested that some pollers were able to vote multiple times,” the company furthered.
To corroborate the claims, AIT released an accompanying spreadsheet file, which supposedly showed the doctored votes.
However, Executive Director of Nigeria’s Paradigm Initiative and consultant Gbenga Sesan, who tweets using the handle @GbengaSesan, conducted an investigation of the accompanying file, finding instead that AIT forged the documents, allegedly crafting fake IP addresses to support their claims. Sesan, an ardent Buhari supporter, outlined the details on his Twitter page Thursday.
“What AIT won’t tell you about the CSV file shared with other media houses, along with their statement, is that it’s easy to edit columns,” Sesan tweeted. “I challenge AIT to release the CSV file with all erring IP addresses, and let’s trace those IPs to see where they lead.”
Read the tweets below:
When Reno Omokri (aka Wendell Simlin) got caught, some people repented. Let’s just say AIT has been caught pants down. Tweets in a bit 😀
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
AIT claims that their website was hacked by APC supporters who rigged votes for Buhari from similar IP addresses. Here’s why they’re stupid!
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
In the next few tweets, I’ll explain how Internet Protocol (IP) addresses work and prove that AIT is guilty of FORGERY. Please be patient…
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
You don’t have patience for numbers? Please read number tweet #1 and #2 to get the idea, then skip all the way to tweet #14 for the juice
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
1. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are number labels assigned to devices within a network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
2. Internet Protocol designers used 32-bit number. IP protocol version 4 (IPv4) is limited because it’s only from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
3. That basically means IP version 4 only has 4,294,967,295 IP addresses. That explains why IP version 6 (128-bit numbers) is now being used
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
4. Long numbers can be confusing. So, IP addresses use dotted-decimal format: 4 numbers separated by periods. Something like 192.168.123.132
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
5. If geeks don’t want to be nice, they’d leave easy IP address 192.168.123.132 as 32 bit number. That’d be 11000000101010000111101110000100
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
6. To make 11000000101010000111101110000100 easy, split into octets – sequence of 8 bits. That would be 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
7. 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100 made much easier would then be 192.168.123.132. How? Let’s look at octet 1 – 11000000. Still with me?
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
8. To convert 11000000 from binary to dotted-decimal format, just do the 2 raised to power thing. That’s 1*2^7+1*2^6+… (the rest are all 0s)
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
9. For the 2 raised to power thing, we count from the right. Last number to the right is multiplied by 2^0. Next one by 2^1. 2^7 for the 8th
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
10. So 1*2^7 = 1*(2*2*2*2*2*2*2) = 128. 1*2^6 = 64. Add both and you have 192. Binary 11000000=Dotted-Decimal 192. Repeat for 3 other octets
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
11. If you run your numbers well you’ll have binary 11000000.10101000.01111011.10000100 in dotted-decimal format as 192.168.123.132. Got it?
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
12. So the highest binary set in an octet = 11111111. Convert that. That’s 128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1=255. If an IP address exceeds 255, it’s fake
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
13. Enough jargon. I said all that to say it’s easy to know a fake IP address when you see one. More on IP addresses: http://t.co/fVkfEXo15r
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
14. Now, to AIT. For those who skipped from tweet #2 to this one, una nor try at all ☺ AIT claims that votes were rigged in favour of Buhari
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
15. I now have a copy of the CSV file sent by AIT to media houses. This copy was obtained from a pro-GEJ news website http://t.co/fOhtSifyKN
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
16. This image shows beginning of the spreadsheet but that’s not exactly where we will focus attention. Stay with me… pic.twitter.com/QDlVye0Bvc
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
17. Twitter allows 140 characters, so let’s start from row 140 🙂 In the attached image, you’ll see rows 140 to 171 pic.twitter.com/GYSTBbkk4s
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
18.Major-General Muhammadu Buhari cleared all of the 32 votes, right? Oh, AIT says “rigged”. Their proof is the CSV file they released. Hmm
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
19. Ladies and gentlemen, look at the IP addresses again. What did you notice? Exactly. 82.145.210.258 to 82.145.210.293. 258 and 293? AIT?!
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
20. The folly went all the way to 82.145.210.570. First, 82.anything isn’t geographically in Nigeria. It’s in Europe. AIT says NIG. Error 1
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
21. The biggest error is that anything above 255 is not a valid dotted-decimal number. Remember, highest binary is 11111111. That’s 255.
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
22. Ladies and gentlemen, AIT messed up! Big time. If you would fabricate lies, don’t be lazy like the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
23. AIT fabricated IP addresses that don’t exist to prove that APC rigged their poll. Shame on you, AIT. I dare you to disprove these tweets
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
24. I’ll say this again. This is 2015. Not 1999. If you’re going to lie, be smart about it. Otherwise, we’ll factcheck and expose your lies!
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
In conclusion, @AIT_Online, you owe @ThisIsBuhari and @APCNigeria apologies. The management of Daar Communications PLC lied. Apologise NOW!
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
On behalf of honest Nigerians who just want a better country, I invite YOU to look beyond propaganda and vote for change. #ThingsMustChange
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
AIT reminds me of the cheat who was given “expo”. He dubbed all answers, and also dubbed the instruction, “don’t dub beyond this point” 😀
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
The cheats needed to show a lot of rows with Buhari and similar IPs. When “engineer” got to 255, (s)he forgot “don’t dub beyond this point”
— ‘Gbénga Sèsan (@gbengasesan) January 29, 2015
I crosschecked what @gbengasesan tweeted about IP addresses. No part of the address can be more than 255! pic.twitter.com/fG7C3tpsvR
— #BringBackOurGirls (@OKShorty1) January 29, 2015
