TheCable

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the Department of State Services (DSS) as a “shameless apologist of the Peoples Democratic Party” for invading its data centre in Lagos on Saturday.

The DSS had carried out a raid on one of the party’s data centre based on the suspicion that voter cards were being cloned there.

At a press conference in Lagos on Monday, the party through its spokesman, Lai Mohammed, said it wondered why a self-respecting intelligence gathering secret agency would rely on “beer parlour gossip” in carrying out its responsibility, especially as the polity was charged.

”The spokesperson for the DSS said the organisation 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?” it queried.

”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.”

The APC office

Meanwhile, the APC said it had been forced to suspend its membership registration following the damage done to the equipment at its data centre in Lagos by the invading force of the DSS and the Navy.

”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 vandalised 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,” the party said.

Reiterating its earlier call for an independent inquiry into the invasion, it stated that the incident had taken the impunity of the Jonathan administration to its worst level.

”It is important to get to the bottom of this unprecedented action in the political history of our nation, especially because it may have compromised the 2015 general election,” APC said, calling on all Nigerians as well as the country’s international partners to condemn the action.