As he walked across the stage to address the gathering, the young MC joked on Monday morning that Prof. Joash Amupitan is one man nobody would really want to envy in Nigeria today. This was beyond a joke, which the INEC Chairman soaked in with some equanimity. In less than three months, his agency, which has struggled with a bout of image concerns, would be organizing some major elections which may give him a redeeming opportunity to change the calculus, to convince Nigerians that he can write a good story from a previously bad plot. It was the reason Amupitan was at the Continental Hotel in Abuja. Offered a platform at the National Summit on Electoral Information Integrity, jointly organized by the International Press Centre (IPC), the Centre for Media and Society (CEMESO) and DAI, with support from the European Union, he delivered a deeply troubling paper which could be summarized as follows: the fear of artificial intelligence (AI) is the beginning of good elections. “Today, elections can be undermined long before the first ballot is cast. The threat is no longer limited to physical interference (such as violent ballot snatching) at the polling unit; it takes shape within digital networks through synthetic media, automated misinformation/disinformation, deepfake fabrications, digital micro-targeting, and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). The troubling reality is that many democracies are not really prepared for these,” Amupitan said.
Addressing the Summit theme, Beyond the Ballot: AI, FIMI, and the Integrity of Nigeria’s 2027 Elections, Amupitan gave no room for fear but instead displayed a commanding grasp of the electoral ecosystem to rally stakeholders to the realization that the democratization of AI has unleashed more challenges for electoral managers to handle. We can help Amupitan tell his story from there. There was already AI in February 2023. But it was a computer glitch from the backend of the INEC setup that blemished the integrity of a national election which had gone well until that unfortunate intrusion. The exponential growth in AI technology, which even the promoters are beginning to be afraid of as they fear it can imperil life and other human activities, is creating a cluster of concerns globally, with Amupitan now having to call on the concerted efforts of stakeholders to rescue the 2027 elections from a technology which carries so much good and evil. Unfortunately for all of us, there are so many tech mavericks, the troubled cyber denizens who will always want to take advantage of the negative side of technology to create and extend damage just to satisfy their satanic instincts. This explains why the INEC boss alerted that the rapid democratisation of generative AI models has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for malicious minds.
So, there is so much to watch out for. This is the more reason Amupitan warned that as we prepare for the 2027 elections, the undeniable truth that we must confront is that public awareness alone is no longer an adequate defence against synthetic content and digital manipulation. Informing citizens that deepfakes exist or urging caution when consuming online news is useful, but it is insufficient against well-coordinated, highly funded, and hyper-targeted information operations designed to erode public trust in election administration. “What Nigeria urgently requires,” he suggested, “is a trusted, coordinated, and rights-respecting operational ecosystem – an institutional structure through which public authorities, security bodies, independent fact-checkers, media networks and platform operators can collectively anticipate emerging threats, verify evidence, escalate incidents without delay, communicate authoritatively, and institutionalize post-event lessons.”
Amupitan’s fears and expectations are not misplaced. He gave this illustration. In 2023, just two days before Slovakia went to the polls – during a mandatory 48-hour electoral blackout period when political parties and traditional news outlets were legally restricted from campaigning or broadcasting political responses – an AI audio recording went viral on local media. The cloned audio purported to capture a high-ranking political party leader actively discussing a scheme to buy votes and manipulate election results. It was a deliberate act, perfectly timed to coincide with the blackout period when campaigning was statutorily prohibited. Unfortunately, the sheer speed of digital dissemination, combined with the restricted response window, paralyzed institutional verification efforts. Amupitan observed that there are some vulnerable moments that some devious people would want to exploit, but, without throwing up his hands in the air in wanton helplessness, he declared very boldly that “our commitment to 2027 is rooted in technological resilience and transparency. To this end, Voter Education is moving beyond ‘how to vote’ to ‘how to verify,’ ensuring citizens can distinguish official INEC communication from AI-generated deepfakes. Furthermore, the electoral agency is also strengthening its digital infrastructure to withstand Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), while establishing robust internal mechanisms to debunk viral misinformation within minutes of its emergence.” He informed that INEC was partnering with global social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and X (formerly Twitter). An MOU has already been signed with TikTok, he informed.
Amupitan is giving the assurance of INEC’s capacity to withstand everything thrown at it by perennially enraged cyber geeks. He appealed, however, that “as we construct this information defence system, we must proceed with strict institutional restraint. The legitimate threat of AI manipulation must never become a pretext for state overreach, digital censorship, or the suppression of political dissent.” It is gladdening that IPC, CEMESO and DAI have provided a platform to thrust the 2027 elections and AI onto the front burner, where they will now attract further interrogations from concerned citizens. While AI may have the good and the bad in equal measure, I want to observe that localizing the problems makes our situation significantly different.
My deduction comes from the fact that Nigeria has a large digital army of very unhappy people, homogenized only by their misery and bitterness against a country that has placed them at the margins. This army, which comes under several names, is readily available to any willing buyer who is ready to pay a little cash. Apart from their desire to make money and take as much of it as possible from the politicians who have confined them to undeserved servitude, there is also the revenge instinct to pay the nation back for letting them down. They don’t need condemnation. The INEC boss is right. We all need to build trust and be educated about the electoral process and specifically know the roles ascribed to each of us as collective stakeholders in the destiny of our nation. The digital army must be made to feel a part of this nation and be assigned roles they can happily execute. You can’t live in a house and burn it over yourself. Putting AI to rogue use during the elections could be worse than burning a house over yourself. The effects could be too extensive to contemplate. Irrespective of how we feel, Nigeria demands from us that we make her a better nation, more able to provide good living conditions for the generations on their way here.
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