The official website of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had many gambling and casino articles. This raises concerns about the safety of the electoral body’s online systems as the 2027 general elections approach.
Martin Uwakwe, an X user known for examining public digital systems, made this discovery. He shared his findings on X with the handle @mundus01, saying he found about 28 gambling and casino pages on INEC’s official website.
Mr Uwakwe pointed out that these were not just links to gambling sites. They were real articles published on INEC’s domain.
One of the pages he found was “inecnigeria.org/discover-the-excitement-of-instant-casino-france/,” which was directly on INEC’s site. He noted that most of these pages were published under the WordPress author name “Ajuma Achor.”
He discovered that a person named Ajuma Achor had previously worked with Interra Networks. This company was a tech vendor that helped with INEC’s website.
Mr Uwakwe mentioned that Ajuma Achor's LinkedIn profile showed she left Interra Networks a few years ago. The pages have now been taken down, but Mr Uwakwe said they are still archived by the Wayback Machine.
“Even though these pages have now been deleted, they were already archived on the Wayback Machine. We need a thorough independent audit of INEC’s technical infrastructure,” he said.
PREMIUM TIMES checked the archived links shared by Mr Uwakwe and confirmed that casino pages had indeed been published on INEC’s website. Some archived pages include articles promoting or discussing online casinos and gambling. These had no clear link to INEC’s responsibilities.
This discovery raises questions about how these articles were uploaded to the site and who has access to INEC’s content management system. Mr Uwakwe said he could not figure out exactly how the pages ended up there.
He offered two possible reasons for the situation. “Either INEC’s website has been compromised for a long time without anyone noticing, possibly through an old or compromised publishing account; or someone with access to INEC’s website is misusing that access to publish casino content, possibly as paid SEO placements,” he explained.
Mr Uwakwe said this incident should make people worry about the overall safety of INEC’s digital systems, especially with the 2027 elections coming up.
“If someone can quietly publish dozens of casino pages on INEC’s official website, then the bigger question is: what stops that same access from being used on election day to publish false information, fake results or a misleading announcement capable of causing chaos across the country?” he asked.
He stated that just removing the pages was not enough. He urged INEC to find out how the content got onto the site. “This needs more than deleting the casino pages. INEC needs to determine who has publishing access, how these pages got there, and whether that access still exists,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Uwakwe said he had contacted INEC privately about a serious problem on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) but did not receive any feedback.
“I noticed a major vulnerability in the @inecnigeria IReV portal that can affect the 2027 General election and reached out to them with detailed information. It has now been three days, and I have even sent a follow-up, but I have received no acknowledgment, not even a simple ‘Received,’” he shared.
“More concerning, nothing appears to have been done to address the vulnerability I discovered,” he added.
Speaking with PREMIUM TIMES, he confirmed that the issue discovered on the IReV portal is a separate problem. When asked about the details, he said, “I don’t want to make it public so bad actors don’t take advantage of it. That was why I reached out to INEC directly, and the director of ICT has assured me they are working to fix it ASAP. I will keep monitoring and possibly escalate if it doesn’t get fixed.”
In a later post, Mr Uwakwe said he finally heard back from INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology. He explained the steps being taken to fix the issues he pointed out in the IReV portal.
“I woke up to a detailed message from the Director of ICT at INEC explaining what they are doing to fix the vulnerabilities I identified in the IReV portal,” he wrote.
“Hopefully, they can get this sorted as soon as possible.” Mr Uwakwe also clarified that the casino issue was not the problem he reported to INEC earlier.
“Just to clarify: the issue with the website and casino links wasn’t what I raised with them privately a few days ago,” he said. He found the casino pages only after he posted about INEC’s lack of response to his earlier email regarding the IReV problem.
“It was after I made the post about INEC not responding to my email that I discovered the casino links. Since I didn’t get a response regarding the IReV issue, I felt there was no point going that route, hence the post that has now gone viral,” he said.
PREMIUM TIMES tried to reach INEC spokesperson, Mohammed Haruna, through calls and messages for comments on the casino pages, the “Ajuma Achor” account, who can publish content on the site, and if an investigation was underway.
The newspaper also asked if INEC knew about the pages being on its website and if they planned to do a security audit of their digital systems. There was no response to these questions by the time this report was filed.
The casino pages have been removed from the live website, but the archived records mean the incident can still be tracked.
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