Security operatives invade APC’s data centre in Lagos

Armed security operatives on Saturday attacked the Lagos office of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said Lai Mohammed, the party’s National Publicity Secretary. Mohammed alleged that the party’s data base was destroyed by the operatives.

One of the computers destroyed ..PHOTO: PM News

Giving details of the invasion, Mohammed in a statement issued Saturday afternoon  said a combined team of men of the DSS and OP-MESA stormed the Bola Ajibola Data centre belonging to the APC in Ikeja and arrested 25 APC data agents and three security guards.

His words: “In what was a gestapo-like operation, the APC membership data centre located at Number 10, Bola Ajibola street, off Allen Avenue in Ikeja, came under siege between the hours of 5:30 am and 7:30 am on Saturday.

“An operation of terror and brigandage was unleashed on a legitimate operation of a leading national party. They came without a search warrant for the premises.

“Over 50 security operatives drafted from Abuja operations blocked the two major street entrances to the APC data entry centre, pulled down the gates and spent over 2 hours ransacking and vandalizing the centre.

“More than a dozen computers were destroyed. The server was also vandalized along with other equipments in the building. Just like the Watergate scandal in the USA, the state-sponsored security operatives apparently acting at the behest of the ruling PDP government turned the office upside down, and pulled out and vandalized everything in sight.

“If the PDP-led government and the security agents had done due diligence and acted professionally, they would have known that the APC data centre is a legitimate operation and the staff are Nigerian youths who were left jobless by the Jonathan government.

“Apart from the Lagos centre, the operation is decentralized and similar centres are functional in about six different locations around the country.

“They chose to believe the lie that it was a warehouse belonging to one of the national leaders of the party where dangerous weapons were being kept, when in fact it is a centre for entering the data provided by the millions of Nigerians who registered as members of the party during its membership registration exercise,” the party said.

He spoke further: “The invasion could only be likened to the Watergate Scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974, as a result of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the attempted cover-up of its involvement by the Republican Nixon administration.

“Saturday’s attack is another one in the string of attacks and illegal actions of the PDP-led administration. The attack was unwarranted and unjustifiable.

“To attack one of the offices of the opposition party, APC, where legitimate operations of the party were being undertaken is an act of fascism and totalitarianism. To the point of brigandage, the invasion of the APC centre is an assault on the APC and its entire membership across the country. It must not go unpunished"

According to Mohammed, the party got wind of the an impending raid on the ‘secret warehouse’ of its leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu,  but it dismissed the report since “there was no ‘secret warehouse’ anywhere and also because we never imagined that the government will attack the offices of an opposition party in a constitutional democracy”.

He added: “Obviously we under-estimated the desperation of the Jonathan Administration and its worsening proclivity to impunity.”