The Department of State Services (DSS) has released a list of 24 items it recovered from its raid on the All Progressive Congress (APC) data office in Lagos.
In a statement issued on Monday by its Deputy Director, Public Relations Marilyn Ogar, the DSS insisted that it acted on a petition alleging an ongoing cloning activities of INEC Permanent Voters Card (PVC) by some unscrupulous persons with intent to hack into INEC data base, corrupt it and replace them with their own data at No. 10 Bola Ajibola Street, off community Avenue, Allen Avenue, Ikeja LGA, Lagos State.
The statement reads in part: “Consequently, the Service placed the premises which had no Signpost under surveillance and was convinced that unwholesome activities were ongoing within.
“On 22nd November, 2014, a search operation was executed at the above address were a Search Warrant obtained from the Court was executed.
“The search was carried out in the presence of one Onuchukwu Chika AUGUSTINE and twenty four (24) others, while and the following items were recovered: One server, Four hard drives, One external hard drive, One HP Laptop, One Server switch, Fourflash drives, One Samsung tablet, One Apple computer system without CPU and thirty one Ghana-must-go bags containing hard copies of already captured data.
“All items recovered were documented at the back of the Search Warrant signed by the Service team leader and was witnessed by two occupants of the premises; Onuchukwu Chika Augustine, an IT personnel and Olaposi Fayemi, a supervisor on duty.”
“Photographs (still and video) of service personnel entering and exiting the premises in an operation that lasted for two hours were taken.
“Exploitation of some of the recovered items has revealed that one particular individual had his data captured eighteen times with different names and addresses but yet the same photograph. However, further investigation is ongoing and findings shall be made public,” it added.
In a swift reaction, APC National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed at a press conference in Lagos, said it was unfortunate that the agency relied “beer parlour gossip” in carrying out its responsibility, especially in a politically-charged environment like in Nigeria.
He 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.”
The APC alleged that the DSS had now become one of the enforcement arms of the PDP and that the real reasons the service broke into its offices were to deprive it of its membership data base as well as to aid and abet the rigging of the 2015 elections.
“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”, the spokesman added.
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