APC suspends membership registration in Lagos

• …Lambasts SSS for justifying invasion of party’s Data Centre 

From Ayodele Samuel, Lagos

The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday said it has been forced to suspend its membership registration following the damage done to the equipment at its Data Centre in Lagos by the invading force of the DSS and the Navy.

At a press conference held in Lagos yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party described as plainly implausible and a witless afterthought the reasons given by the DSS for invading the Data Centre of the party in Lagos on Saturday, calling the security service a shameless apologist of the PDP.

The party wondered why a self-respecting intelligence gathering secret will rely on beer parlors gossips in carrying out its onerous responsibility, especially in a politically-charged environment like what prevails in the country at present.

‘’The spokesperson for the DSS said the organization had put the building housing the Data Centre under surveillance, and that it only acted after it was convinced that ‘unwholesome activities’ were taking place. What hogwash! If indeed they put the place under surveillance, would they not have been able to establish that it is an APC Data Centre? Even if they were not sure, what prevents them from obtaining a court order permitting them to enter and search the building instead of carrying out a Gestapo-like operation? Are security agencies above the law?

“To highlight their crudity and lack of professionalism, they had to go and arrest one of the staffers who was not on duty just to get the password to the servers they vandalized and took away. This speaks volumes about the limitation of the DSS’ intelligence gathering ability. If they had broken into the Boko Haram computer, would they have gone to arrest Abubakar Shekau or any of his commanders to give them the password to it? Nigerians can now see why no progress has been made in using intelligence gathering to root out the evil Boko Haram,’’ it said.

APC said, far from the lies concocted by the DSS, which has now become one of the enforcement arms of the PDP, the real reasons the service broke into the offices of the party were to deprive it of its membership data base so it can no longer contact its members, and also to aid and abet the rigging of the 2015 elections by the PDP.

“With the membership data base now in their possession, it has become easy for them to collude with INEC to know which areas we are strong so they can scuttle the distribution of the Permanent Voters Cards there and, during the elections, to also deprive such areas of voting materials.