Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Isa Pantami announced that 12.99 million cyberattacks were recorded during the recent election week, with 6.99 million of those occurring on presidential election day, 25 February. He said the attacks comprised a range of hacking attempts, including distributed denial‑of‑service (DDoS) attacks, email and intrusion‑prevention‑system (IPS) attacks, SSH login attempts, brute‑force injections, path‑traversal exploits, detection‑evasion techniques and forceful browsing. Pantami asserted that the presidential cybersecurity committee was “up to the task” and successfully blocked all the attacks.
A statement from Pantami’s spokesperson, Uwa Sulaiman, noted that threat intelligence had shown an “astronomical increase” in cyber threats to Nigerian cyberspace in the run‑up to the 2023 general elections. She added that while public websites and portals typically faced around 1,550,000 daily threats, that figure “skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on Presidential Election Day.”
Cybersecurity experts, however, have challenged the government’s figures, calling them implausible and suggesting they may be propaganda. Professor Adesina Sodiya, president of the Nigeria Computer Society, told the media that, based on his experience, it is unlikely such a volume of attacks could occur in a single day. He noted that when the NCS inquired whether the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had recorded any recent attacks, the commission’s chairman said none had been reported, creating a discrepancy with the government’s claim.
Sodiya further explained that coordinated cyberattacks typically involve repeated attempts to gain access, and the scale reported by the ministry does not align with known patterns of cyber‑threat activity. He called for more detailed information to clarify the situation.
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