- Agency Denies Arrest Of Statistician-General By DSS
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described the report of the hack of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website as “suspicious.”
The Matrix reports that barely 24 hours after the agency published a report on the payment of N2.2tr as ransom by Nigerians in one year, hackers took over the website of the agency.
Confirming the development, NBS, in a post published on X early on Thursday, December 19, 2024 asked members of the public to ignore any report published on its website until it recovers the website.
“This is to inform the public that the NBS Website has been hacked and we are working to recover it. Please disregard any message or report posted until the website is fully restored. Thank you,” the agency said.
Reacting to the development in a statement released on Thursday, Abubakar said the development “adds up to the bad tidings that have characterized the President Bola Tinubu administration”.
READ ALSO: Nigerians Paid Over N2.2trn As Ransom In One Year, NBS Reveals
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.”
Meanwhile, the bureau has denied claims that Adeniran Adeyemi, statistician-general of the federation, was invited for questioning by the Department of State Services (DSS).
READ ALSO: DSS Releases Adebutu, Dismisses Allegations As Baseless
Media reports on Thursday had claimed that Adeyemi was called in by the DSS for interrogation on the methodology and data used in the report, which claimed that ransom payments had reached alarming levels, sparking national and international reactions.
But Ichedi Sunday, head of communications at the NBS, said the “report is not true”.
According to Sunday, the statistician-general was never called by the DSS for interrogation.
“I can authoritatively say the reports are not true,” he said.
“I was with the statistics-general up until late last night yesterday when the news broke out and there was no call from the DSS. Other platforms had called me and I told them it was not true. I also spoke to him (Adeyemi) today.
“So, this is not true. I don’t know why the wrong information is still being published.”
