Accusations and counter-accusations held sway late last year over the State Security Service’s (SSS) raid on APC data centre in Lagos over intelligence reports of misdemeanor, WALE RAYNERS writes from Lagos.
The war of words between the State Security Service( SSS) and the leading opposition party in the country, the All Progressive Party(APC) late last year over the raid of its data office has not abated.
In a proactive attempt to forestall electoral rigging, the SSS, also known as Department of State Service, carried out a raid on APC Data office in Opebi area of Ikeja, Lagos State. Marilyn Ogar, the DSS spokesperson, said the agency received a petition alleging “unwholesome activities in the building located at No.10, Bola Ajbola Street, Allen Avenue, Ikeja”.
“The petition alleged that those behind the activities were cloning INEC Permanent Voters Card with the intention of hacking into INEC data base, corrupting it and replacing them with their own data.
“Based on this information, the service placed the building under surveillance and having been convinced that some unwholesome activities were going on in the building, it undertook a raid of the premises.
“In the process, some persons were arrested, while a server, three hard drives and 31 Ghana must go bags of hard copy documents were recovered and taken away for further investigation,” Ms. Ogar said.
She added that the building had no sign post indicating it was a private or government office.
Following the incident, APC announced the suspension of its membership registration programme, citing the raid as the reason for the action. The party described the DSS as a “shameless apologist of the Peoples Democratic Party” for invading its data centre on the Saturday.
At a press conference in Lagos, the party’s spokesman, Lai Mohammed, wondered why a self-respecting intelligence gathering agency would rely on “beer parlour gossip” in carrying out its responsibility, especially as the polity was charged.
APC spokesman, Lai Mohammed
The party said: ”The spokesperson for the DSS said the organization had put the building housing the data centre under surveillance, and that it only acted after it was convinced that ‘unwholesome activities’ were taking place.
“ What hogwash. If indeed they put the place under surveillance, would they not have been able to establish that it is an APC data centre? Even if they were not sure, what prevents them from obtaining a court order permitting them to enter and search the building instead of carrying out a Gestapo-like operation? Are security agencies above the law?”
”To highlight their crudity and lack of professionalism, they had to go and arrest one of the staffers who was not on duty just to get the password to the servers they vandalised and took away.
“ This speaks volumes about the limitation of the DSS’ intelligence gathering ability. If they had broken into the Boko Haram computer, would they have gone to arrest Abubakar Shekau or any of his commanders to give them the password to it? Nigerians can now see why no progress has been made in using intelligence gathering to root out the evil Boko Haram.
“Far from the lies concocted by the DSS, which has now become one of the enforcement arms of the PDP, the real reasons the service broke into the offices of the party were to deprive it of its membership data base so it can no longer contact its members, and also to aid and abet the rigging of the 2015 elections by the PDP.
”With the membership data base now in their possession, it has become easy for them to collude with INEC to know which areas we are strong so they can scuttle the distribution of the permanent voters cards there and, during the elections, to also deprive such areas of voting materials,’’ he had said.
But the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has accused the APC of engaging in “unwholesome acts towards truncating the country’s democracy”.
The ruling party expressed shock over the alleged findings of the DSS at the office of the APC, urging the security agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the issue.
Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of PDP, described the APC as a desperate party that was planning to compromise the 2015 general election.
He added that there was a possibility that APC had cloning centres in all the states of the country in order to achieve its sinister aim.
“This discovery at the APC office in Lagos is a clear confirmation of our stand, and fears by well-meaning Nigerians of APC’s criminal desperation, lust for power, plot to cause confusion and truncate our democracy,” Metuh said in a statement.
“Since its formation, the APC has been accusing everyone, including INEC and security agencies of working to rig the 2015 elections in favour of the PDP. Little did Nigerians realize that such were smokescreens designed to divert attention from their heinous and unpatriotic plots.
“ We believe that the APC, in its desperate attempt to grab power by all means, has already established cloning and hacking centres in all the 36 states of the federation to actualize their dubious machination to subvert the will of the people.
“ We share the fear of a majority of Nigerians that the APC may have already started cloning ballot papers and other election documents,’’ he said.
The PDP, however, urged Nigerians to remain vigilant and resist any attempt by the APC to steal their mandate.
Time Nigeria reports that Ogar had displayed several materials that were recovered which purportedly indicated that APC planned to hack into INEC voter registration database and manipulate it.
One of the hard drives recovered from the building contained a video of 21 hacking tutorials. The video, it was learnt, explained how to hack into the system of media houses with the aim of broadcasting fake stories. As the general elections approach, more dramatic episodes will play out in Nigeria’s political theatre.
