Still terrified witnesses paint a shocking picture of how far a western firm will go to win an election.

If Britain hadn’t voted to leave the EU, and Trump hadn’t won the US election, it’s unlikely anyone outsideNigeriawould have given a second thought to what went on during its presidential election campaign three yearsago.But the 20/20 vision of hindsight casts a very different light on the events ofearly 2015, and a campaign that now seems to eerily prefigure what happened in the US a year later. Many of the same characters, some ofthe same tactics.At the heart of it all – data analytics company, SCL – the parent company ofCambridgeAnalytica. It had been hired bya rich Nigerian who supportedthe incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan.“It was the kind of campaign that was our bread and butter,” says one ex-employee. “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.”This was a standard variation on what SCL had done aroundthe world for 30 years – this time, with a twist. Weaponising information to harm an opponent was standard methodology.It was a methodology honed and developed in the company’s defence and military work – the fifth dimension of warfare, definedby the US military as “information operations”.What was new, or at least new to those employees who have now spoken out, was bringing these techniques to the company’s election work.Seven individuals with close knowledge of the Nigeria campaign have described howCambridge Analytica worked with people they believed were Israeli computer hackers.The sources – who spoke to theObserverover many months – said the company was looking for “kompromat” on Muhammadu Buhari – at the time, leader of the opposition.They said the hackers offered Cambridge Analytica access to private information about Buhari.Their testimony paints an extraordinary picture of how far a western company would contemplate going in an effortto undermine the democratic process in a country that already struggles to provide free and fair elections.Their claims are disputed by the company, which insists it did not take possession of or use any personal information for any purpose and did not use any “hacked or stolen data”.The company confirmed, however, that it had been hired to provide “advertising and marketing services in support of theGoodluck Jonathancampaign”.That work seems to have come about through Brittany Kaiser, a senior director at Cambridge Analytica, who would go on to play a public role at the launch of Nigel Farage’s Leave.eu campaign, and a senior strategist on the Trump campaign.Regarded by colleagues as a prolific networker, in December 2014 she was introduced to a Nigerian oil billionaire who wanted to funda covert campaign to support Jonathan.The billionaire wanted total discretion.An 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 bitridiculous. It was only six to eight weeks before the election and they were lookingto spend nearly $2m.”The election was a big deal. At stake, the future of the most populous country inAfrica, and potential access to its lucrative oil reserves. The sitting president was favourite to win, though Buhari was doing unexpectedly well.Not least because his team had hired AKPD, once the firmof former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod, which was pushing a slick, social media heavy Obama-esque message of hope.“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,” the employee said.Most but not all respects. The Observer has obtained an astonishing and disturbing video that Cambridge Analytica used in the campaign.“Coming to Nigeria on February 15th, 2015,” the voiceover says in the manner of a trailer for a Hollywood movie.“Dark. Scary. And very uncertain. Sharia for all.” And then it poses the question: “What would Nigeria look like if sharia were imposed by Buhari?”Its answer to that question is certainly dark. And scary. It’s also graphically, brutally, violent. One minute and 19 seconds of archive news footage from Nigeria’s troubled past set to a horror movie soundtrack.There are scenes of people being macheted to death. Their legs hacked off. Their skulls caved in. A former contractor said: “It was voter suppression of the most crude and basic kind. It was targeted at Buhari voters in Buhari regions to basically scare the shit out of them andstop them from voting.”If Buhari wins, the film warns: women would wear the veil. Sharia law would be introduced. And the inference is, you may be macheted to death.It wasn’t just videos spreadingfear. The Cambridge Analyticacampaign team in Nigeria were jumpy too.“It felt risky, being there. There were various points when we were told we were indanger.” And in the Abuja hotel to which the team was confined in early 2015, rumours abounded.The tales are Graham Greene-esque. The hotel was where slick western consultants, including a team from the now disgraced Bell Pottinger, partied with their Nigerian counterparts. Mingling amongthem, western intelligence operatives - state backed, or privately commissioned, nobody was quite sure.And then there were the meetings: three sources have told the Guardian about one that took place between Cambridge Analytica employees and two people they were told were Israeli intelligence operatives.“There was a two-hour meeting that took place in thehotel lobby between two senior campaign members and Israeli intelligence. After which they swept our hotel rooms for listening devices and said they would switch out our phones. The story we were told was that there wereintelligence agents from a number of different countries,including Israel and France, who were supporting Goodluck Jonathan and helping the campaigns.”There is no suggestion that Jonathan was aware of or implicated in this support. Another employee said: “Basically the Israelis didn’t want [Buhari] to win.”Other employees questioned whether they were “real” Israeli intelligence operatives, or Israeli private contractors.A few weeks later, as the campaign was drawing to a close, there was another meeting at Cambridge Analytica’s London office.An expert had flown in from Israel with a laptop, sources say.And Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s now suspended CEO, and Kaiser, asked employees to take a thumb drive and download thecontents on to their own computers.The content was private emails and the information, they were told, related to Buhari’s financial and medicalrecords.One employee who was present at the London meeting said he had initially assumed the visiting expert was Mossad or Israeli intelligence passing on what he called “legtimate information”.Cambridge Analytica was offered politicians' hacked emails, witnesses sayRead moreBut he began to realise this wasn’t the case, he said, whenhe saw the reaction of his colleagues. One of them had “freaked out”, he said. “He was like, ‘What the Bleep? I don’t want anything to do with this.’”The witnesses are clear – at least in their own minds. The information they were shown had come from hackers.Back in Nigeria, the team still on the ground found out what was going on from their colleagues in London. There was more “freaking out”. This time with live, pressing concerns.“They were fucking scared,” said a colleague who spoke to them while they were in the country. The campaign fixer, the person with local knowledge who navigated them through the ins and outs of Nigerian politics, made it clear to them: they needed to get out of the country right away.Cambridge Analytica had put them all in danger, they said. If opposition supporters found out, there was no saying