NJC PROBE: MTN counters Salami •Says our system can’t be hacked into •Panel concludes hearings on petitions

CURTAINS were drawn on hearings in petitions arising from the Ekiti and Osun state governorship appeals on Thursday, with telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria, reportedly telling the five-man National Judicial Council (NJC) probe panel that its system was impregnable to hackers conducting illegal activities.

MTN’s Senior Manager, Commercial Legal, in the Corporate Affairs Division, Mr Rotimi Odusola, who incidentally was a witness of the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami, was said to have contradicted Salami’s claim that his MTN mobile line was hacked to call chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) before, during and after the controversial judgments in the two states.

Salami brought before the panel his court’s Head of Information Communication Technology (ICT), Mr Sheriff Usman, penultimate Wednesday, who reportedly testified that the hacking process possibly used against Salami was “spoofing.”

Spoofing is the practice of causing a telephone network to display a number on the recipient’s phone which is not that of the actual caller.

It is an authorised way of using a subscriber’s line illegally.

Salami, while not denying the conversation with the ACN chieftains, was said to have defended the usage of his MTN line with the spoofing theory, culminating in his invitation of the MTN official to prove that the telecommunications firm was not fool-proof.

Former Governors Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun State and Segun Oni of Ekiti State had accused Salami of engaging in unholy conversation in the course of determining governorship appeals in the two states.

Odusola, however, reportedly contradicted Salami by saying “hacking is not possible in our system.”
The MTN manager was also said to have been made to read The Nation newspaper of February 26, 2011 tendered by Salami, in which the telecoms company confirmed that it was not possible to hack into its system.

Confirming the release of the call logs in respect of the case at hand to the National Security Adviser (NSA), the MTN  boss, who reportedly said call logs from the organisation were always released on demand, added that such was always released in hard copies, through email or in flash drives to security agencies or to the individual subscribers.

A source privy to the proceedings quoted him as saying “we print the CDR (logs). The exception is we sometime released electronically and through flash drives to the subscribers, police, SSS and EFCC.”

Under cross-examination by counsel for former governors of Osun and Ekiti states, Lekan Olatawura, he reportedly said that MTN prints call logs in standard A4 papers, while he was said to have admitted that when photocopied, the paper “could be enlarged with bolder prints.”

Nigerian Tribune learnt that the MTN manager further confirmed that the entries in the call logs tendered by the NSA tallied with those in the logs submitted by the Osun and Ekiti PDP with their petitions.

He was said to have found it difficult to explain why his company claimed in a letter to the NJC that it did not have call logs earlier than February this year but curiously submitted those of December 2010 and January 2011 to the NSA.

Another set of the same call logs sought to be tendered by the PDP was reportedly turned down by the panel on the grounds that their covering letter was not certified by a High Court.

The panel was said to have announced the conclusion of its sitting on the Ekiti and Osun states matter after Salami reportedly closed his case while the PDP was asked to submit its address on Monday next week.

Justice Salami opened his defence before the NJC probe panel on a dramatic note, as he brought a witness to prove that his telephone line was hacked into to make  calls to ACN chieftains and lawyers.