Actor Emeka Ike says he is prepared to take action against Lere Olayinka, media aide to the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, over the exposure of his data from the portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Ike contested for the House of Representatives seat for the AMAC/Bwari Federal Constituency in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC) and lost.
Olayinka recently came under heavy criticism from Nigerians after leaking Ike’s voter information through an INEC administrative webpage.
On his X handle on Saturday, Olayinka tweeted that Ike was formerly a registered voter in Imo State before transferring his registration to the FCT on May 15.
He attached two images to the post, which many believed contained details obtained from INEC’s administrative login portal.
Some of the personal information contained in the screenshots included Ike’s application number, registration centre, Voter Identification Number (VIN), profile picture, name and date of application.
Reacting to the development on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday, Ike described Olayinka’s action as shocking and the height of political rascality.
“It’s quite shocking, extreme and it is the height of political rascality for government officer to access a citizen’s information from the INEC cyber. It tells you a lot, shows how much impunity we have flying around there and people have access to the things they shouldn’t be having access to and that’s quite deplorable and I see that as a huge insult and slap on every political party and every Nigerian.
“He is telling every Nigerian that whoever you are, I can pull your information from anywhere and I can do what I want and that rascality needs to be stopped,” he said.
The actor said he was ready to challenge Olayinka for exposing his private details to the public.
“Actions are ready, I’m ready to take him on. He has no right to exploit my privacy and insult Nigerians the way he did. If he has been doing it in the past, this should be the last time he does it.”
Speaking further on the breakfast programme, Ike explained the reason behind his decision to contest for the House of Representatives seat in the FCT.
“I actually wanted to run in my state but a couple of people came to me, it was like a clarion call. People came to me and told me, ‘sir, you need to do this now, we need you in Abuja’.
“And I’m like you know I’m already trying to run in my state, but they insisted and the surge was high and I considered it seeing the relevant issues they brought on board and I said okay fine let’s see how we can build Abuja. A municipal area needs to be properly guarded and looked into, so I decided to shift to Abuja,” Ike said.
