ABUJA (The T.A. Report) ― The Federal Government has reacted to a spate of attacks launched against websites and Twitter handles belonging to some of its agencies by Anonymous, an international hacktivist movement, and said the group was free to keep them.
“It is not like we were using them before anyway,” said presidential spokesperson Fem De-sin during an interview on Sunset Weekly.
“This is exactly why we don’t put too much information on our websites. We have always known a time would come when doing so could threaten national peace and security,” he added.
Another problem, he said, is that to constantly update and maintain online platforms, the government would need to employ many young hands, who “we honestly do not trust to keep doing things the way they have always been done”.
Some of the affected platforms include the websites of the Independent National Electoral Commission, National Industrial Court, and the Edo State Government, as well as the Twitter handle of the National Broadcasting Commission.
De-sin said going forward, the country would invest more in paper documentation, television and radio broadcasts, as well as town criers as means of recording and disseminating information. “Our forefathers and founding fathers knew what they were doing when they relied on these tools; plus we would even be creating more jobs, especially once we employ 1,000 town criers in each local government area,” he explained.
“Our government has already embarked on this backward journey to development. Didn’t you see when the Lagos State governor printed pictures of the explosion in Abule-Ado and went to Abuja to show the president? Didn’t you see how good it looked in the cameras when recently the Vice President viewed tweet printouts from his office desk? That is the Nigeria of the future, friends.”
Anonymous’ spokesperson, who (of course) asked for anonymity, told our correspondent that while websites and social media accounts run by the Nigerian government have been extremely easy to hack, the group has not seen “a more barren set of government sites in its years of activism”.
“Many of them are running on very old technology and the job was far too easy. But it was like someone giving you his debit card and PIN only for you to find out that the account has become dormant or is totally empty,” he said, still in shock.
“The emails are not any better. The few functioning addresses are hardly used, so we had to start infiltrating personal emails.”
Meanwhile, it was gathered that, in view of the recent cyber-attacks, the federal ministry of communications and digital economy is set to propose a security upgrade for government websites, said to cost between N10 and N15 billion.
“While the actual upgrade should require about N100 million, we need the remaining sum to, you know, take care of miscellaneous expenses,” one partly reliable source told us.
Caveat: Note that this piece is a fictional satire aimed purely at humour. The words above are nothing but products of a drunk writer’s imagination. We hereby refuse to accept responsibility for the results of anyone’s credulity or mischief. Do not take us seriously. We repeat; do not take us serious! … On second thought though, maybe you should do just that.
