by Emeka Nwankwo
Former media aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe, has become the latest former senior government employee to be pointed out in the arms scandal involving former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki.
According to an investigation by Premium Times, two companies, linked to Doyin Okupe, were contracted to execute “three shady cyber security contracts” during the 2015 election campaign. These contracts are said to have cost Nigerians a whooping N1.6 billion of the $2.1 billion largesse Dasuki is accused of misappropriating.
Furthermore, the contracts were awarded without due process and value for money. This is evidenced in one of the contracts were full payment was made before the contract was even carried out.
“Insiders claim the contract was never delivered,” states the report.
The NSA, it was revealed, paid doubly for all the contracts awarded and also relied on single sources instead of opening up the contracting process to competitive bidding- in other to get the best possible price.
It was revealed that one of the contracts had details to shut down media websites that were perceived to be unfriendly/critical of the Jonathan administration and those overly friendly towards the then APC presidential candidate, now President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari. The contracts were to be carried out with Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
“The second contract was to intercept all optic fibre cables landing in Nigeria. The third was a passive mass and target GSM interception that had the ability to decrypt ciphers and operate undetected,” the report says.
Romix Technologies Limited, a company registered in Cyprus as offshore and anonymous, had on June 13, 2014, received a part-payment of N398 million, for a cyber hacking contract that would amount to $2.6 million, from the Office of the NSA.
The contract awarded to Romix Technologies was explained without specifics as “supply and installation of cyber intelligence systems software at the office of the National Security Adviser.” Premimu Times’ investigations, however, show that the “true nature of the contract was to acquire tools to carry out Distributed Denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites believed to be critical of Jonathan, ahead of the election.”
The details of the alleged contract was to flood unfriendly website servers with harmful traffic in other to shut genuine visitors out of the sites and causing damages to the host servers. Furthermore, unnamed experts were reported to have said that the amount paid “for these hacking services was at least 250 percent higher than the actual market value.”
YNaija, alongside Premium Times and other online news websites, suffered these attacks before, during and for a brief period after the last general elections.
Doyin Okupe’s affiliation to the said company is that the company shares the same first name and financial transaction with a Nigerian company owned by Okupe and an Isreali national, Ilan Salman. The name of the company owned by Messrs. Okupe and Salman being Romix Soilfix Nigeria limited.
Although several transaction, as far back as 2012, were traced between the Cyprus based Romix Technologies and the Nigerian based, Romix Soilfix Nigeria ltd- Doyin Okupe denies having any relationship with the Cyprus based Romix Technologies.
“Romix Technologies is a duplicity of name. I have nothing to do with it,” the former presidential aide was quoted to have said.
His Isreali partner, however, did not deny that there was any link between the two companies. He also claims that the Nigerian government still owes him $600, 000 for the contract.
Furthermore, no tax was remitted for the contracts awarded to Romix Technologies. The second contract, according to the report, was to an Israeli company owned by Mr. Salman and another Israeli, Maoz Steinhauer. The contract was “meant to create a backdoor access to all fibre optic cables landing in Nigeria for the Office of the National Security Adviver.”
The contract, which was not completed, was said to have cost N712.2 million. The third contract was for the supply of “a stealth intrusive GSM mass surveillance called Enrage G12 Tactical Solution developed by Verint.”
And is said to have cost Nigeria N335.1 million.
