Former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, said the coincidence of the hacking of the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), shortly after the release of damning statistics on security, is suspicious.

Atiku in a statement by his media office in Abuja on Thursday, noted that the incident was cause for concern to the fidelity of the statistics it releases to the public.

“The development, which is coming on the heels of the recent data published on the website of the NBS on Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey (CESPS), underscores the credibility crisis of the current administration.

“These are strange times in Nigeria, and it is hoped that the situation at hand is not an underhand attempt to pigeonhole the integrity of data majorly used for planning and development and research purposes,” he stated.

The former vice president added that “subjecting data and statistics such as those harvested, analysed, and released by the NBS to sexing up or political considerations, is counterproductive.”

He described the website hack as an unpleasant development that added to the bad tidings that have characterised the President Bola Tinubu administration.

“We may be tempted to assume that every stats released by the bureau is an outcome of a hack!” Atiku added.