Over 24 hours after its officials raided an
office of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in
Lagos, the Department of State Services, DSS,
has given reasons for its action.
In a statement on Sunday by its spokesperson,
Marilyn Ogar, the DSS, popularly called SSS,
said it 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.
The spokesperson, who has in the past made
unsubstantiated allegations against the APC,
said the building had no sign post indicating
it was a private or government office.
The DSS statement came almost 24 hours after
the APC announced the invasion of its office
and called for a thorough investigation of the
perpetrators.
In the statement by its spokesperson, Lai
Mohammed, the APC said the building was
being used as a data centre for its members.
“In what was a gestapo-like operation, the
APC membership data centre located at
Number 10, Bola Ajibola street, off Allen
Avenue in Ikeja, came under siege between
the hours of 5:30 am and 7:30 am on
Saturday,” Mr. Mohammed said.
“An operation of terror and brigandage was
unleashed on a legitimate operation of a
leading national party. They came without a
search warrant for the premises.
Over 50
security operatives drafted from Abuja
operations blocked the two major street
entrances to the APC data entry centre, pulled
down the gates and spent over 2 hours
ransacking and vandalizing the centre.
“More than a dozen computers were
destroyed. The server was also vandalized
along with other equipments in the building.
Just like the Watergate scandal in the USA,
the state-sponsored security operatives,
apparently acting at the behest of the ruling
PDP government, turned the office upside
down, and pulled out and vandalized
everything in sight.
“If the PDP-led government and the security
agents had done due diligence and acted
professionally, they would have known that
the APC data centre is a legitimate operation
and the staff are Nigerian youths who were
left jobless by the Jonathan government. Apart
from the Lagos centre, the operation is
decentralized and similar centres are
functional in about six different locations
around the country.
“They chose to believe the lie that it was a
warehouse belonging to one of the national
leaders of the party where dangerous
weapons were being kept, when in fact it is a
centre for entering the data provided by the
millions of Nigerians who registered as
members of the party during its membership
registration exercise.”
The opposition party called for an
“independent inquiry to fish out those who
ordered the needless and unprovoked attack”.
“Now that they have overreached themselves
by attacking the offices of the main opposition
party and destroying part of its membership
database, can the PDP-led government still
claim to be operating under the rule of law?
Can the government sincerely tell the world it
is now ready for free and fair elections in
2015? This is one impunity too many, and we
will not allow it to be swept under the
carpet,” it said.
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