The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Monday described as immaterial the reasons given by the DSS for invading the Data Centre of the party in Lagos on Saturday.
The opposition party said the reasons were plainly implausible and witless.
Speaking at a press conference held on Monday in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the security service has become a shameless apologist of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The party chieftain wondered why a self-respectful intelligence gathering security outfit will rely on beer-parlour gossips in carrying out its onerous responsibility, especially in a politically-charged environment like what prevails in the country at present.
He 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 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,’’ it said.
According to him, 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 added.
Speaking further, the party said, ‘’The viciousness and barbarism of the attack on the Data Centre and the arrest of 26 innocent workers, which put a lie to the DSS claim, have disrupted and corrupted the continuous offline and online membership registration across the country.
‘’The over 50 security men who invaded our offices not only vandalized the offices, they pulled out and carted away the Server and computer systems. Their activities have therefore affected the process of online/offline registration and data capture of APC members across the country, hence we are left with no choice than to suspend the process,” he added.
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