While the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dismissed as nothing the hacking of its website during accreditation time for final voting yesterday, information and communication technology (ICT) experts have said that INEC may not be telling the nation the truth.

Kayode Idowu, Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman while responding to questions on the hacking of its website said there was no cause for alarm as the engineers were in full control. But the ICT experts that spoke to The press said that contrary to the INEC position there was real cause for alarm. The experts said what the hackers did was that they brought down the index page of INEC website blocking the Commission from having access while doing damage on its database.

They said the implication is that every information INEC had on its database must have been tampered with and this is not good for the nation.

Godwin Uche, one of those who spoke said it is shame that INEC website could be hacked on day like this. He wondered how much the Commission must have budgeted for IT and how much that was actually spent to do the job.

“It simply showed INEC hired the wrong people to do the job and this is incompetence on the part of the INEC Chairman. What does it take to provide 24 hour security for INEC website on a day like this”, he snapped.

He said that the manner of hacking showed that apart from the fact that the hackers may have been hired by some desperate politicians who wants to do damage, the manner of hacking and the comments that followed it, showed that it was done by youths who may be aggrieved with the system and who may be reacting to the fact that the right professionals were not hired to do the job.

“When INEC advertised for IT staff, most of Nigerian youths that applied did not even get acknowledgment for their application
letters not to talk of being called up for interview.

When they complained nobody bothered to do anything about it. “Some of these people that applied were professionals who knows the job. Now if people could hack into INEC website for any reason on a voting day like yesterday, when professionals were supposed to be securing the site; it means that those manning the website are not the right people and may have been hired on man know man basis which is really dangerous for this country”, he said.