In Nigeria, AI management specialist Martin Uvakwe has discovered around 28 casino-related articles published directly on the official website of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), according to the investigative publication FIJ.
Among the materials were reviews of French instant casinos, and as noted by Technext24, articles in the Czech language. Just hours after Uvakwe's statement, some of these pages became inaccessible, while edited materials were assigned the title 'Uncategorised', as reported by FIJ.
The publications were made under an account name that matches that of a woman who previously worked for INEC's technology contractor. Uvakwe suggests that this points either to a long-unnoticed hack through an old account or to an abuse of access for paid SEO placements.
This finding follows a July investigation by Techpoint Africa into an Indonesian gambling syndicate that was placing hidden casino content on approximately 20 government websites across 16 African countries to drive search traffic to online casinos. Researcher Chris Nwobi noted that the website of the Federal High Court of Nigeria was returning online casino pages instead of its own content for users searching for gambling queries.
Some of these placements are still accessible, including an SEO article about well-known casinos in southern France published on the website of the Kogi State tax authority. With less than five months remaining until the general elections in Nigeria in 2027, which INEC is set to organize, the situation raises concerns.
The iGN editorial team also discovered a cluster of casino articles on a developer subdomain of the INEC website, hosted on the infrastructure of the same technology contractor. Among them were reviews of casinos licensed in Anjouan and Costa Rica, a guide to installing casino applications, and a selection of platforms without KYC checks. Judging by the timestamps, the articles were published from April to July, and at the time of this post, Google continues to display them in search results.