INEC finally speaks on hacking of its website

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said it was not aware that its online database was penetrated by hackers.

INEC’s Director of Publicity and Voter Education, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, stated this on Thursday, while appearing as guest on Channels TV’s flagship programme, Politics Today, which was monitored by DAILY POST in Abuja.

Several civil society groups had alleged that some politicians bent on thwarting the conduct of free and fair general elections in 2019 have recruited foreign actors to hack into INEC’s website and render it porous to enable the uploading of fictitious results from remotes locations.

Reacting, Osaze-Uzzi said INEC would have noticed any penetration of its database, if its online security had been compromised.

He added that though the electoral umpire does not conduct much of its activities online, it still maintained a robust security system.

His words: “I am not aware that our database was hacked by anyone. Certainly, not recently.

“I don’t know where that one (allegation) is coming from. We are the custodians of the database. If it were compromised, we would have known it was hacked.

“But that is not to say there hasn’t been any attempt to penetrate our security. But, I can assure that our security is robust. We take it seriously.

“Don’t forget, there are not too many things we do online yet. We probably would (only) transmit results in real-time.”