By Henry Odeh
No fewer than ten members of the Oyo state Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) media team including some of its state party executives have raised an alarm over a reported persistent attack on members social media accounts on facebook and twitter, the said social media accounts is said to belong to some PDP members in Oyo state. It was alleged that some unscrupulous elements suspected to be sponsored members of some opposition parties in Oyo state particularly the All Progressive (APC) cyber-rats.
The PDP Oyo state chapter through its publicity secretary Engr. Akeem Olatunji while having media chat with sunrise bulletin news correspondent in Ibadan yesterday made this disclosure, he warned whoever the hackers are to desist immediately from such criminal act which compromises the dignity of sanity in politics. The spokeperson of PDP further stated that not fewer than ten stunch members of his party including himself have been victim of social media account hacking in the past weeks by the suspected hackers who has been on a serial hacking mission in the past couple of weeks. He described the act of going as far as hacking private individuals accounts in this 21st century as a show of sheer desperation, uncivilized, and an infringement on individual right to privacy which has legal implications.
PDP noted that the manner and pattern of hacking its members accounts serially, suggests that it is targeted specifically at gainning access into the PDP members online accounts. The PDP publicity secretary therefore, called for more proactive measures by its party members in the state particularly members of the PDP media team to adequately secure their social media accounts to avoid future vulnerability to those alleged sponsored cyber-rats.
He said “ordinarilly, we would have ignored the situation when it started unfolding as one of those criminal activities going on in the social media space but the manner and pattern of the serial hacking of our social media accounts specifically on facebook and twitter gives us serious cause for worry, we have every reason to think and suspect involvement of some members of the opposition including the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo state because what happened on members of our party media team including myself happened within the space of three weeks! this is why we are raising the alarm to let the public know what is going on and to send a strong warning to those involved in such criminal activity to desist forthwith.”
