How Wike's aide accessed Emeka Ike’s voter details, INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has explained how Lere Olayinka, the spokesperson for Minister Nyesom Wike, got voter registration details of Nollywood actor Emeka Ike. Olayinka later shared these details online.

In a phone interview with PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, INEC spokesperson Mohammed Haruna said an investigation by the commission and the police showed that an electoral officer from the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) gave the screenshots to Olayinka.

Haruna said that security agents initially questioned four people, including three INEC officials and a daughter of one of the officials. They also took the mobile phones of one INEC official and her daughter.

According to Haruna, the INEC official accessed Ike’s information from the voter register and passed it to the AMAC electoral officer. The official reportedly used her daughter’s phone to take the screenshots.

Haruna mentioned that the police have detained the AMAC electoral officer who shared the screenshot with Olayinka. He said the electoral officer is still under investigation, while the others have been released but must keep reporting to the investigators.

Haruna described the officer’s actions as “overzealousness.” He added that investigations showed the officer had not met Olayinka in person before.

“The EO was taken to the police SARS office for questioning by the chief security officer of our chairman,” he said. “He’s still with them. He has shared his side of the story, which matched what the minister’s aide (Olayinka) confirmed: they don’t even know each other. But the others were released and asked to report back to the police. They were there yesterday, and they came back again, and they are supposed to return today around one o’clock.”

The police also called in Olayinka for questioning. The FCT media aide did not answer calls from this newspaper or return any messages asking for his comments.

Background

Olayinka had posted screenshots showing Emeka Ike’s personal voter details. These screenshots raised alarms because they came from an administrative backend of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) system, which is only available to authorized INEC officials.

INEC’s spokesperson said officials at its FCT office checked Ike’s details after he led protests alleging that some officials of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) were at the INEC FCT office on Friday.

Ike is hoping to represent AMAC/Bwari Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives under the NDC. Olayinka criticized Ike by posting screenshots from the voter register, which showed that Ike had only transferred his polling unit to the FCT about two weeks earlier.

Database not hacked, INEC

The issue gained attention after social media users recognized that the screenshot came from INEC’s CVR administrative portal. This raised concerns about the security of voter data and whether anyone had illegally accessed INEC’s systems.

However, INEC has reassured the public that its systems have not been hacked or accessed by outsiders. The commission stated that the incident was due to misuse of authorized access by its officials, not an external breach.