APC to sue DSS over Lagos office raid

 John Odigie Oyegun

2015 go hot sha....The All Progressives Congress has said it will sue the Department of State Service for Saturday’s invasion of its Lagos State secretariat by the operatives of the DSS.

The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said this in an interview with one of our correspondents on Sunday.

Asked what the APC would do to redress the invasion, he said, “We will definitely go court to seek redress and enforce our fundamental rights. Two days before then, they went to attack the House of Representatives we had information that this was going to happen.”

However, the DSS commonly referred to as SSS, justified the raid, arguing that it acted based on information.

The Deputy Director, Public Relations of the DSS, Marilyn Ogar, in a statement issued in Abuja, explained that the department swung into action based on a petition.

She said the petition alleged that the APC data operators planned to corrupt the database of the Independent National Electoral Commission and replace it with the party’s.

Ogar said the building was subsequently placed under surveillance by the operatives of the DSS, adding that the service only acted when it was convinced that unwholesome activities were going on in the building.

She maintained that Saturday’s raid led to the arrest of some persons while a server, three hard drives and 31 Ghana-must-go bags of hard copy documents were recovered.

The DSS spokesperson said, “A petition was received by this service about some activities at No. 10, Bola Ajibola Street, Ikeja, Lagos. The petition alleged that those behind the activities were cloning INEC permanent voter cards, with the intention of hacking into INEC database, corrupting it and replacing them with their own data.

“Based on this information, the service placed the building under surveillance and having been convinced that some unwholesome activities were going on in the building, it undertook a raid of the premises.

“In the process, some persons were arrested, three hard drives and 31 Ghana-must-go bags of hard copy documents were recovered and taken away for further investigation. It must be noted that the said location had no signpost indicating whether it was a private or government office.”

However, Mohammed dismissed Ogar’s claims, saying that the DSS was acting out a script which was part of a grand plan to intimidate the APC and its supporters to pave the way for the rigging of the 2015 elections.

Mohammed challenged the DSS to make public any incriminating document found in the building.

According to him, it is laughable for the service to say the party was cloning PVCs when they could not even get the password into the computers they found in the place.

“What did they get when they got there? They couldn’t invite us? In 2014, just a few months to the 2015 elections, they are telling us they did not know it was our office. They could not even get the password. How can you say we are cloning PVCs? Where is the evidence now,?” he queried.

Mohammed also said, “They even said we had a warehouse where we store weapons, we don’t have any such warehouse and we know nothing about weapons.

“The whole idea is to destablise our party and rig the 2015 elections because what they have done now is to take our database and from there make sure that we don’t get PVCs, that’s what they are doing and this is not going to be allowed to go like that.

“What this administration is doing is an invitation to anarchy, we will not allow the excesses of a few individuals trying to use institutions sustained by tax payers’ money to truncate this democracy that we all laboured and fought hard to give life to.”