Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has blamed the President Bola Tinubu administration for the alleged hack of the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Atiku said the unprecedented claim “adds up to the bad tidings that have characterized the President Bola Tinubu administration.”
On Tuesday, the National Bureau of Statistics said approximately 614,937 Nigerians were murdered in one year.
The report titled, The Crime Experienced and Security Perception Survey (CESPS) 2024 was based on surveys conducted between May 2023 to April 2024.
The report disclosed that 2,235,954 Nigerians were kidnapped nationwide while N2.2trn was paid as ransom, an average of N2.7m per incident.
Meanwhile, Atiku in a statement by his Media Office in Abuja stressed on the fidelity of data and statistics for development purposes.
Atiku said, “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 development, which is coming on the heels of the recent data published on the website of the NBS on CESPS, underscores the credibility crisis of the current administration.
“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 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.