INEC Website Shows Broken Links and Uncategorised Content After Gambling Articles Exposed
Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has had its official website compromised to host promotional content for offshore online casinos, according to iGamingToday. The breach saw pages on inecnigeria.org, the domain responsible for publishing election information, used to promote French-language casino platforms and redirect visitors to unlicensed operators.
The compromised pages, which have since been taken down, were published under an account identified as "Ajuma Achor" and contained multiple articles written in French promoting instant-play casino platforms. Embedded links routed visitors to an aggregator listing offshore operators such as Super Kasino, Fortuna Online, and Casino XYZ. Separate pages in Czech, also under the same account, suggest the operation was targeting multiple European markets at the same time.
Hours after Martin Uwakwe, an AI governance professional, revealed that some pages led to gambling articles, FIJ NG reported that sections of INEC's website contained broken links and uncategorised content. On Wednesday, Uwakwe took to X to disclose that during his tour of the inecnigeria.org website, he found up to 28 casino and gambling articles.
One of these links, 'inecnigeria.org/discover-the-excitement-of-instant-casino-france/', now leads to a page with an 'Error 404' message, indicating that the link is now broken. FIJ also found that some of the pages now have 'Uncategorised' as headers for previously compromised contents that have been modified.
Speaking about his findings, Uwakwe said, "I found multiple casino and gambling articles hosted directly on INEC's official website. I identified about 28 gambling/casino pages hosted on the official INEC website."
Uwakwe noted that most of the clearest cluster was published under the WordPress author name 'Ajuma Achor'. He checked further and found that a person with the same name worked with Interra Networks, a technology vendor that has worked on INEC's website, and that her LinkedIn appears to indicate she left Interra some years ago.
"That raises two worrying possibilities: either INEC's website has been compromised for a long time without anyone noticing, possibly through an old or compromised publishing account, or someone with access to INEC's website is abusing that access to publish casino content, potentially as paid SEO placements. I don't know which one exactly. But either scenario is frightening," Uwakwe said.
Similarly, the 'voters.inecnigeria.org' link also leads to an 'Error 404' message after previously hosting Russian messages.
A Wider Pattern of Government Website Compromises
The incident follows a pattern known as SEO spam injection, where malicious actors embed gambling content inside trusted government domains to exploit their authority in search engine rankings. By doing so, traffic is channelled toward unlicensed operators without the host institution's knowledge.
INEC has not yet responded to requests for comment on the breach.
A July report revealed how an Indonesian gambling syndicate was hiding content on about 20 government websites across 16 countries. That report, credited to Chris Nwobi, an independent security researcher and founder of Zend Cybersecurity Threat Labs, also highlighted other Nigerian government sites.
Nwobi said, "On some sites, they hide it even better. Nigeria's Federal High Court website looks completely normal to a regular visitor, but if you arrive from a Google search for gambling, it quietly serves you a casino instead."
Techpoint Africa published findings from Zend Cybersecurity Threat Labs showing that three Nigerian federal sites, NILDS, NEMA, and NAERLS, had been compromised to serve Indonesian gambling content as far back as May 2026. One of those pages even carried a "SLOT88" copyright line.
The report also said Nigeria's Federal High Court website had been compromised in November 2024, rerouting users who arrived via gambling-related search queries directly to illicit casino pages while appearing normal to everyday visitors.
In total, around 20 government websites across 16 African countries were found to have been hijacked to host gambling content.
FIJ NG also reported that the website of the Kogi State Internal Revenue Service (KG IRS) still contains exposed links to gambling content, with a page on 'rhmdb.irs.kg.gov.ng' leading to a gambling article. The extent of the breach of INEC's website and the identities of its sponsors are largely unknown, and more Nigerian government-owned websites continue to be found with exposed links sending visitors to gambling platforms.