AI disinformation could undermine Nigeria’s 2027 polls, INEC warns

Nigeria’s electoral commission says synthetic audio, video and images generated by artificial intelligence could become a serious threat to the credibility of the 2027 elections.

INEC Chairman Joash Amupitan said electoral technology and communication should be treated as one discipline. He made the remarks in Abuja in a keynote address delivered on his behalf by National Commissioner Sani Adam at a conference on digital disruption and electoral communication.

Amupitan said public trust depends not only on the ballot, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and result sheets, but also on whether voters understand and trust information about the electoral process. The deployment of BVAS and the INEC Result Viewing Portal was intended to improve transparency by allowing citizens to see polling-unit results before they move to collation centres.

He also acknowledged that the 2023 election showed how technology can create doubt when it underperforms. In a statement issued by INEC, he said legitimacy depends on reliable systems, public understanding and honest explanations when technology falls short.

INEC is conducting a comprehensive audit covering system redundancy, penetration testing and disaster-recovery plans. It is also considering a mock presidential election to test voter accreditation, result transmission and result viewing under conditions resembling election day. Amupitan warned that generative AI has made fabricated political content cheaper to produce and increasingly difficult to detect.