Atiku: NBS claim of website hack suspicious — data shouldn’t be policised

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar says the hack of the website of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is “suspicious”.

In a statement released on Thursday, Abubakar said the development “adds up to the bad tidings that have characterized the President Bola Tinubu administration”.

On Wednesday, NBS announced that its website — www.nigerianstat.gov.ng — was hacked.

The agency asked members of the public to ignore any report published on the website until its recovery.

When TheCable checked the website on Wednesday evening, the landing page was displaying an inscription: “Page hacked” with a white background.

The website is not available at the moment.

The hack of the website occured 24 hours after the agency published its crime experience and security perception survey report.

In the report, the NBS said Nigerians paid N2.23 trillion as ransom in one year between May 2023 and April 2024.

‘POLITICISATION OF DATA IS UNPRECEDENTED’

Abubakar said subjecting data harvested by NBS to political consideration is “counterproductive”.

“The development, which is coming on the heels of the recent data published on the website of the @NBS_Nigeria on Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS), underscores the credibility crisis of the current administration,” the statement reads.

“These are strange times in Nigeria, and it is hoped that the situation at hand is not an underhand attempt to pigeonhole the integrity of data majorly used for planning and development and research purposes.

“Subjecting data and statistics such as those harvested, analysed, and released by the NBS to sexing up or political considerations is counterproductive.

“That is why the claim that the website of the National Bureau of Statistics was hacked into, the very first time in its history, should be of concern to the fidelity of the stats it releases to the public.

“Moreover, the coincidence of this so-called hack coming only shortly after the release of damning stats on security is suspicious.”