This is a shocking report from what Premium Times:

Here is a very important information for the
47 million Nigerian Internet users. Big
Brother, in the form of the Jonathan
administration, is watching you, and your
communication is no longer safe.

It is one of the most far-reaching policies
ever designed in Nigeria’s history to invade
the privacy of citizens.

The Jonathan administration secretly, and
in open violation of lawful contracting
procedures, has awarded an Israeli firm,
Elbit Systems, with headquarters in Haifa, a
$40million contract to help it spy on
citizens’ computers and Internet
communications under the guise of
intelligence gathering and national security.

Elbit announced the contract award Wednesday
in a global press release but was silent on the
Nigerian destination of the contract. Its general
manager, Yehuda Vered, opaquely announced
that “Elbit Systems will supply its Wise
Intelligence Technology (WiT) system to an
unnamed country in Africa under a new $40
million contract announced on 24 April… for
Intelligence Analysis and Cyber Defense,” but
effusively claimed, in the statement, that his
company is “proud to be selected to supply this
unique system, which is already field-proven,
fully operational and customisable.

“Elbit Systems is a world leader in the fields of
intelligence analysis and cyber defense, with
proven solutions highly suitable for countries,
armies and critical infrastructure sites. We hope
that additional customers will follow in selecting
our highly advanced and cutting edge systems
in these fields as their preferred solution,” Mr.
Vered added.

Multiple and very reliable sources in the
administration confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that
Nigeria is indeed the “unnamed African
country,” and with details from the Elbit
statement, our sources say the contract will now
help the Jonathan administration access all
computers and read all email correspondences of
citizens in what is clearly, an infringement on
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of
expression.

No single policy of this administration has so far
affected, in one fell swoop, the lives of 47 million
citizens, a third of the Nigerian population and
about four times the number of voters who
brought the president to power two years ago.
Nigerian netizens, the horde of active citizens
that use the computer and Internet, are the
10th in a global ranking that make them 27 per
cent of Africa’s total Internet users, far ahead of
Egypt [19th global ranking] and South Africa
[37th in global ranking].

The growth path of the Internet in Nigeria has
also been dramatic, rising from a mere 200,000
Internet users in 2002 to 47 million this year,
according to data from the Global Internet user,
one of the Internet audit groups.

This development has not always gladdened
public officials in Nigeria many who have
expressed open displeasure at the use of the
Internet by social media activists and the power
of its possibilities as an empowering medium for
popular communication. The calls for regulation
have been loud in both the administration and in
the Nigerian legislature.

The earliest hint that the Jonathan
administration had desires to invade privacy of
citizens surfaced ealy April when researchers at
the Munk School for Global Affairs at the
University of Toronto alerted the world that
Nigeria, Egypt, and Kenya were deploying
Internet surveillance and censorship technology
developed by an American company, Blue Coat,
which specializes in online security. Blue Coat’s
technology will allow the government to invade
the privacy of journalists, netizens and their
sources.

Its censorship devices use Deep Packet
Inspection, DPI, a technology employed by many
western Internet Service Providers, to manage
network traffic and suppress unwanted
connections.

Civic groups kick against DPI because, they say,
it makes it possible for censors to look into every
single Internet Protocol packet and subject it to
special treatment based on content (censored or
banned words) or type (email, VoIP or BitTorrent
Protocol).

DPI not only threatens the principle of Net
Neutrality and the privacy of users, civic groups
say, it makes single users identifiable and, in
countries that flout the rule of law and violate
human rights, often exposes them to arbitrary
imprisonment, violence or even torture.

While details of the Blue Coat contract appears
to have managed to evade scrutiny up till this
point, PREMIUM TIMES sources say the Elbit
annunciation of the contract, opaque as it was,
terribly rattled top administration officials – from
the presidency to the National Security Adviser’s
Office, and the National Assembly.

“The presidency had wanted this contract to be
a top secret,” said one of our sources. “The
presidency did not envisage that Elbit was going
to make it public. Monitoring computers and
Internet use is a contentious issue and the
National Security Adviser had tried to keep the
contract secret.”

Elbit says it will take it two years to complete the
project, by which time it claimed, the
administration will have “a highly advanced end-
to-end solution, [to] supports every stage of the
intelligence process, including the collection of
the data from multiple sources, databases and
sensors, processing of the information,
supporting intelligence personnel in the analysis
and evaluation of the information and
disseminating the intelligence to the intended
recipient…[that] will be integrated with various
data sources, including Elbit Systems’ Open
Source Intelligence (OSINT) solution and Elbit
Systems’ PC Surveillance Systems (PSS), an
advance solution for covert intelligence
gathering.”

The administration had indicated in the 2013
budget that it would procure a Wise Intelligence
Network Harvest Analyzer System, Open Source
Internet Monitoring System and Personal
Internet Surveillance System at a cost of N9.496
Billion ($61.26 million).

Now that the contract has been awarded to Elbit
for about $40million, it is unclear if the National
Assembly will raise questions as to what
becomes of the extra $21million earmarked for
the project.

Investigations indicate that in awarding the
contract to the Israeli firm, no tenders or calls for
bids were made just as there were no public
announcements. The contract was awarded
following a proposal from a single vendor who
dictated the contract sum and the terms of the
contract.

The procedure for public procurement of
services as stipulated by the Bureau of Public
Procurement (BPP), the Nigerian agency charged
with the duty of ensuring transparency in all
matters concerning government contracts, were
largely ignored. In addition, there are no public
records indicating that the BPP approved this
contract.

The manner of award directly contravenes the
2007 Public Procurement Act. While the Act
gives room for single source contracts, the Elbit
contract met none of the requirements under
which such special contracts could be awarded.
Section 47 (3) (iii) of the 2007 Act stipulates
that single source contracts are to be awarded in
emergency situations such as “natural disasters
or a financial crisis”.

Presidential spokespersons, Reuben Abati, and
Doyin Okupe were not available for comments
Wednesday. They didn’t answer or return calls
seeking comments.

Calls to Elbit’s headquarters in Haifa, Israel, were
also unanswered.
Shari Clarkson, a spokesperson at the company’s
subsidiary in the United States declined
comments on the contract saying only Dalia
Rosen, a spokesperson based in Israel, could
comment. Rosen’s phone was unanswered.

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