The Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), on Wednesday disclosed that Nigeria’s Cyberspace recorded 3,834,244 attacks before, during and after 2023 Governorship and State Assembly elections.
The 2023 Governorship and State House of Assembly elections took place in 28 states across the country on March 18, 2023. So far, results of 22 states have been declared by the respective states Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Commissioners.
AFRIPOST reports that while the results of 5 states are currently under collation including Abia, Enugu, Imo, Borno and Ebonyi, Adamawa election has be declared inconclusive by the election umpire as at Tuesday, March 21, 2023.
In a statement by Dr. Femi Adeluyi, Senior Technical Assistant (Research and Development) to the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Pantami directed the Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure to further enhance the cyberspace surveillance activities of the three cybersecurity Centres of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) in line with the Ministry’s mandate aimed at supporting the initiatives of securing the Nigerian cyberspace.
AFRIPOST recalls that the Committee, inaugurated by the Minister on the eve of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, was charged with the responsibilities of, “Developing and implementing plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats; designing procedures and using technologies to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks, as well as developing the ability to quickly recover from any damage that is done; developing a comprehensive risk assessment, analysing the nation’s current cybersecurity capabilities, and identifying gaps that need to be addressed; and providing professional advice to the Government on the effective utilisation of digital technologies in the conduct of the 2023 General Elections.
The statement added that, “Based on Minister’s directives, the Committee provided close oversight on the activities of the cybersecurity Centres, from Friday 17th March, 2023 to Monday 20th March, 2023. During this period and as previously reported, a series of hacking attempts were recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and Internet Protocol Spoofing (IPS) attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing. A total of 3,834,244 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria.”
