It has emerged that a Nigerian oil mogul engaged the services of a data analytics company, Cambridge Analytica, to discredit then opposition candidate General Muhammadu Buhari before the 2015 elections and pave the way for the re-emergence of incumbent, Dr Goodluck Jonathan.
According to the Observer, a publication of Guardian UK, the billionaire, whose identity remains undisclosed, sanctioned the use of medical and financial data about Buhari obtained from “Israeli hackers”.
An ex-employee with the firm, whose identity was not disclosed, said, “It was the kind of campaign that was our bread and butter.
“We’re employed by a billionaire who’s panicking at the idea of a change of government and who wants to spend big to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Indeed, SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica’s parent body, had been into election consultancy for 30 years.
The billionaire reportedly offered the company $2 million (app. N700 million at 365/$) to ensure it deployed its expertise to ensure Buhari did not come to power.
The report quoted seven individuals with close knowledge of the campaign as saying that Cambridge Analytica allegedly worked with people believed to be Israeli computer hackers.
The hackers had offered the company access to hacked personal information about Buhari, all in a bid to discredit the candidate and render him unelectable before Nigerians.
Speaking on how the deal was made, an ex-employee said Brittany Kaiser, a senior director at Cambridge Analytica, had been introduced to the billionaire in December 2014, two months before the election.
The billionaire then told her how he wanted a top-secret campaign to support Jonathan’s campaign.
The ex-employee said, “[Kaiser] got a phone call. It was just before Christmas and she flew out to meet them in Washington DC. It was all a bit ridiculous. It was only six to eight weeks before the election and they were looking to spend nearly $2m.”
“There were a lot of scared millionaires worried that Buhari would get in. It was all very last-minute. A team flew out to Abuja and put together a communications campaign. It was a straightforward, normal comms campaign in most respects.”
But the campaign turned out to be more than a normal communications campaign, as the company produced a hate-filled advert that cast Buhari as a religious bigot who would introduce Sharia into the country.
Also, the Observer reported a meeting between an Israeli national and the top hierarchy at Cambridge Analytica, including its CEO Alexander Nix and Kaiser, as the campaign was winding down.
The Israeli allegedly flew into the UK with a laptop and held a meeting with the officials in the company’s London office.
The laptop reportedly contained financial and medical records about Buhari.
The officials were said to have instructed the company’s employees to download the content of the laptop – private emails containing the information – to their own computers.
An employee said they had thought the information was “legitimate information” from the official Israeli intelligence agency but later refused to have anything to do with the information when they discovered that the official was not from the intelligence agency.
The employees said the information came from hackers.
But SCL Elections denied that it was engaged to unduly influence the course of the election in Nigeria.
“We can confirm that SCL Elections was hired in December 2014 to provide advertising and marketing services in support of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign,” it said.