INEC warns AI-driven disinformation could undermine trust in Nigeria’s 2027 election, urging faster responses, stronger technology and media literacy.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Wednesday raised the alarm over the growing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence-driven disinformation which, it said, poses one of the most serious threats to the credibility of the 2027 General Election in Nigeria.
The commission said its credibility now rests as much on how information about its processes is understood and trusted as it does on the integrity of the ballot, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and result sheets.
The chairman of INEC, Prof. Joash Amupitan, represented by a National Commissioner, Sani Adams (SAN), raised the concerns at the 13th Annual International Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars & Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN), held at the National Open University Conference Centre in Abuja with the theme, “Media, Technology and Elections in Africa: Navigating Digital Disruption and the New Dynamics of Electoral Communication.”
According to him, the deployment of BVAS and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) was designed to close a longstanding credibility gap in the nation’s elections, giving citizens the ability to view polling unit results before they could be altered en route to collation.
The INEC Chairman however, acknowledged that the 2023 General Election showed that such technology could become a source of public doubt when it underperformed, stressing that legitimacy is earned only when systems perform reliably, are well understood, and are explained honestly when they fall short.
Amupitan said that INEC is undertaking a comprehensive audit of its electoral technology systems, covering system redundancy, penetration testing and disaster recovery planning, and is also exploring the conduct of a mock presidential election ahead of 2027 to test accreditation, transmission and results viewing under conditions similar to election day.
Speaking on the threat of synthetic and fabricated content, Amupitan said generative artificial intelligence has made it increasingly cheap and difficult to detect manipulated video, audio and imagery, citing documented cases of doctored political content during recent electoral cycles in West and East Africa, including footage that circulated around Nigeria’a 2023 presidential contest.
He said such content could spread to millions of social media users before verification is possible, cautioning that the danger lies not only in outright fabrication but also in algorithmic microtargeting, which allows conflicting messages to reach narrow segments of the electorate without a shared factual foundation.
Speaking the commission’s preparations for 2027, the Chairman confirmed that INEC has proposed a substantial budget with significant allocations for technology and election operations, including new accreditation devices to replace those lost or damaged in the last cycle.
He said that while full release of the funds is still being awaited, the Commission’s ICT team has already engaged manufacturers on procurement, with planning for the technology audit and mock election proceeding alongside budget finalisation.
Outlining a five-point approach for the Commission going forward, Amupitan called for the integration of technology and communication planning, a dedicated rapid-response capability for countering falsehoods within the same news cycle, pre-emptive public communication about known vulnerabilities and safeguards, deeper partnership with media scholars, fact-checkers and technology platforms, and sustained investment in public media literacy.
He commended INEC’s ongoing collaboration with international partners on cybersecurity architecture and system resilience, and invited ACSPN and Nigeria’s communication scholars into structured collaboration on media literacy research, synthetic content detection, and training for journalists and civic educators.
The Chairman alao observed that Nigeria’s 2027 electorate will be younger and more mobile-first than any before it, describing the smartphone as the primary window through which many voters will experience the election.
He, however, cautioned that solutions adopted elsewhere must be adapted to Nigeria’s own realities of internet access, language diversity and institutional trust, and stressed that INEC’s response to disinformation would be to provide better and faster information rather than to restrict legitimate journalism or civic dissent.
INEC expressed optimism that the conference would produce not only scholarly papers but a lasting channel of collaboration between ACSPN and the Commission, and reaffirmed INEC’s commitment to strengthening both its technology and its transparency as Nigeria approaches the 2027 General Election.
