Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described the “unprecedented claim” that the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has been hacked as an unpleasant development that has added to the bad tidings that have characterised the President Bola Tinubu administration.
Atiku, in a statement by his media office, said, the development, which came on the heels of the recent data published on the website of the NBS on Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS), underscored the credibility crisis of the current administration.
The former presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said, “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.”
The former vice presidential candidate said 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,” he said.
