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NBS claim of website hack is suspicious —Atiku

Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has described the alleged hacking of the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as suspicious.
The hack of the NBS website was announced on Thursday by the agency barely 24 hours after it published its crime experience and security perception survey report where it stated that Nigerians paid N2.23 trillion as ransom in one year between May 2023 and April 2024.
“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 said in a statement published on X early on Thursday.
The NBC also urged members of the public to ignore any report published on its website until it recovered the website.
But in a statement issued on his behalf by his media adviser, Paul Ibe, Atiku described the development as an unfortunate incident which adds up to the bad tidings that have characterised the present administration.
The former VP also warned against politicizing the reports that came out from the NBA which he said would be counterproductive.
“The unprecedented claim that the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has been hacked is an unpleasant development that adds up to the bad tidings that have characterized the President Bola Tinubu administration,” the statement said.
“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.
“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.
“We may be tempted to assume that every stats released by the Bureau is an outcome of a hack!”
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