The said raid was carried out based on surveillance of the building located on Allen Avenue, Ikeja, which confirmed a petition it received that unwholesome activities were taking place there. In response, APC asked why a self-respecting intelligence gathering service will rely on beer parlous gossips in carrying out its responsibility, especially in a politically-charged environment like Nigeria.
The SSS has spoken up about the raid they carried out on the APC Data Center in Lagos. The spokesperson of the SSS, Marilyn Ogar, on Sunday, said the raid was carried out based on surveillance of the building located on Allen Avenue, Ikeja, which confirmed a petition it received that “unwholesome activities” were taking place there.
The “unwholesome activities”, according to the SSS, was the cloning of INEC Permanent Voters Card with the intention of hacking into INEC data base, corrupting it and replacing them with the perpetrators’ own data.
In response, APC asked why a self-respecting intelligence gathering service will rely on “beer parlous gossips” in carrying out its responsibility, especially in a politically-charged environment like Nigeria’s.
At a press conference held in Lagos on Monday by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said, “The spokesperson for the SSS 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 vandalized 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”, APC said.
Lai Mohammend said the reason the SSS gave for vandalizing their data center is fluke, that the real reason was to deprive the party of its membership database.“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”, Mr. Mohammed said.
He also said the party has been forced to suspend its membership registration following the damage done to its equipment at its Data Centre in Lagos by the invading force of the SSS and the Navy.