APC flaws DSS Findings, Calls hacking Claims ‘Great Disservice to Nigeria’
The All Progressives Congress has dismissed the ‘findings’ of the Department of State Security from its invasion of the party’s offices in Lagos, saying it is a ”great disservice to Nigeria and an embarrassment to all intelligence-gathering organisations around the world”.
The party issued a statement via its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday in response to the DSS’ statement, saying the timing of the release of the ‘findings’ was a plot by the ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party, to distract the opposition party from its ongoing preparations for next month’s elections.
He said: ”First the DSS and the PDP said the APC was cloning Permanent Voters Cards at the raided office, without a shred of evidence. Now, after a ‘painstaking’ investigation, the DSS has found out that the APC was only planning to inflate its membership data and then hack into INEC’s database. And this is the outcome of its massive, months-long investigations?
”This would have been funny if it were not from a primary domestic intelligence agency saddled with a great responsibility. Can this wishy-washy report stand any serious scrutiny? Can any serious intelligence gathering agency anywhere else in the world take this report seriously? With these kind of findings, one can now understand why Boko Haram has continued to strike at times and places of its own choosing without any prior knowledge by our all-powerful DSS.
”Even the presentation of the report by a poorly-trained and highly-politicized spokesperson of the DSS worsened the so-called findings. Why would the spokesperson of a national agency sound like a megaphone for the ruling party, freely castigating the opposition spokesman and ”a number of uninformed members of the public”? Why does she have to go personal in presenting a report that supposedly is in the national interest?
”We have always warned that our democracy is in clear and present danger, not just from desperate politicians, but also from institutions of state that have compromised in their roles and resorted to crass lawlessness. The DSS’ ‘findings’ today have given us another reason to repeat this warning.
”While we are willing to meet the DSS in court, we can confidently say that the ‘confessions’ extracted from the arrested persons, after they were subjected to incredible acts of torture, cannot even stand in any court of law.”
The party also referred to its statement releases on December 5, 2014, accusing the DSS of resorting to the use of torture to obtain forced confessions from those who were arrested during the first raid on the party’s Data Centre in Ikeja.
”In that statement, we called the action of the DSS a contravention of the UN Convention against Torture to which Nigeria is a signatory and a violation of the citizens’ fundamental human rights.
”We also said the DSS shackled the hands and legs of those arrested and blindfolded them while they were being taken to
Abuja. The arrested persons remained in chains even at the dark detention cell where they were made to sleep on the bare floor for the 10 days they were detained illegally.
”Guns were pointed at their heads by DSS personnel who threatened to shoot them, while a pregnant woman among those who were arrested was denied access to her drugs even when she started bleeding due to the torture to which she was subjected by the DSS. Now the DSS has confirmed what we said in that press statement. Is anyone still surprised at the action of countries that are distancing themselves from Nigeria over human rights violations?”
