Former employees reveal how British data firm was paid £2m by Nigerian millionaire to back Jonathan

BRITISH data analytics company Cambridge Analytica has revealed that it was hired at a whopping cost of £2m by a rich Nigerian to campaign for former president Dr Goodluck Jonathan during the 2015 general elections.

 

According to a former employee of SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, the firm was hired to dig up harmful information on Dr Jonathan's opponent incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari. In line with international campaign practices, this was then publicised globally with the aim of attracting support for its client.

 

“It was the kind of campaign that was our bread and butter. 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,” the employee added.

 

He pointed out that this was a standard variation of what SCL had done around the world for 30 years.  It was a methodology honed and developed in the company’s defence and military work, the fifth dimension of warfare, defined by 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 how Cambridge Analytica worked with people they believed were Israeli computer hackers.

 

They said the hackers offered Cambridge Analytica access to private information about President Buhari. Their claims, however, 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.

 

Cambridge Analytica confirmed, however, that it had been hired to provide advertising and marketing services in support of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign. 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 become a senior strategist with the Trump campaign.

 

Regarded by colleagues as a prolific networker, in December 2014 she was introduced to a Nigerian oil billionaire who wanted to fund a covert campaign to support Dr Jonathan. At stake, the future of the most populous country in Africa  and potential access to its lucrative oil reserves and although the sitting president was favourite to win, President Buhari was doing unexpectedly well.

 

Not least because his team had hired AKPD, once the firm of former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod, which was pushing a slick, social media heavy Obamaesque message of hope. Eventually, this message carried the day and President Buhari won the election.

 

“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.

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