President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime has said a total of 3,834,244 cyberattacks were targeted at Nigeria during the just concluded governorship and House of Assembly elections.

The latest attacks, which originated within and outside the country, came three weeks after over 12.9 million internet-based criminal attacks were also launched during the February 25 presidential and national assembly poll.

Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, who gave the breakdown of the attack, on Wednesday in Abuja, said the attacks were blocked and neutralised by agencies under the ministry.

Mr Pantami revealed that a total of 1.05 million attacks were recorded a day before the gubernatorial and states assembly election, stressing that 1.5 million attacks were also recorded on election day.

“A total of 3,834,244 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria. Daily breakdown of these attacks are Friday 17th March 2023: 1,046,896; Saturday 18th March 2023: 1,481,847; Sunday 19th March 2023: 327,718; Monday 20th March 2023: 977,783,” the Minister added in a fresh statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Technical Matters, Femi Adeluyi.

Recall that the Buhari regime had before the 2023 general elections raised the alarm over the astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigerian cyberspace.

Just last week, Mr Pantami disclosed that many of the attacks were made on public websites and portals with an average of around 1,550,000 daily.

He specifically mentioned that the attacks include; Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and IPS attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing.

Speaking further in his statement on Wednesday, the Minister admitted that the cyber threats on the country during the last weekend elections were much low when compared with the one held a fortnight ago.

He noted that many of the blockages were facilitated by cyberspace infrastructure put in place by the government to monitor activities in the nation’s cyberspace.

“It is interesting to note that the activities of cyber threat actors on Nigerian cyberspace during the governorship and State Assembly elections are much lower than those during the Presidential and National Assembly elections,” Mr Pantami

The Minister, however, appreciated the Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure for the usual feat recorded in the war against cybercrime.