Gambling Content Surfaces on Official Website of Nigeria’s Electoral Commission

The official website of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has come under scrutiny after a researcher discovered dozens of casino and gambling-related articles hosted on the commission’s domain.

Data researcher and AI governance professional Martin Uwakwe disclosed that he found about 28 gambling and casino pages on inecnigeria.org. He said the contents appeared to have been published directly on INEC’s website rather than merely linking to external gambling platforms.

According to Mr. Uwakwe, many of the pages were published under the WordPress author name “Ajuma Achor”. He said he found that a person with the same name had previously worked with Interra Networks, a technology vendor that had worked on INEC’s website.

Mr. Uwakwe said the discovery raised concerns about whether the website had been compromised through an old or compromised publishing account, or whether someone with authorised access had used the platform to publish gambling content, potentially as paid search-engine optimisation placements.

Some of the affected pages have since been removed, with at least one previously identified gambling link now returning an “Error 404” message. Other pages were also found displaying “Uncategorised” headings after previously compromised content had been modified.

The discovery has raised questions about who had publishing access to INEC’s content management system and whether the incident points to wider weaknesses in the commission’s digital infrastructure ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Mr. Uwakwe also disclosed that he had separately reported what he described as a major vulnerability in INEC’s IReV portal to the commission but initially received no acknowledgement. He later said INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology responded and explained that steps were being taken to address the issue.

He clarified that the IReV vulnerability was separate from the gambling content discovered on the INEC website.

Meanwhile, INEC has not publicly explained how the gambling pages were uploaded or whether it has conducted, or intends to conduct, an independent security audit of its digital infrastructure.

A subsequent review of the live website found that it had been moved to different underlying infrastructure, with the site now running on the Nuxt.js framework rather than the WordPress system previously identified. The homepage was also reported to be functioning normally, while the gambling-related pages were no longer visible.

However, the change in infrastructure has not been confirmed by INEC as a response to the gambling-content discovery, and the commission has not publicly established the cause of the incident.

The findings have renewed calls for greater transparency and an independent audit of INEC’s digital systems, particularly as preparations continue towards the 2027 elections.