•INEC chairman, Prof Joash Amupitan
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has said only Nigerians and not AI will decide the direction of next year’s general election and the next crop of leaders across the country.
Amupitan, who spoke yesterday in Abuja at the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum 2026, an event held in collaboration with Yiaga Africa, assured fellow Nigerians that the Commission had put structures in place to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) serves the democratic process rather than controlling it.
Responding to the fears of Nigerians and questions on whether or not AI will decide the 2027 votes, he said: “Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote.”
The INEC chairman explained that the choice of who leads Nigeria belongs exclusively to Nigerians.
He said the Commission was no longer dealing only with the “analogue” challenges of logistics but with a world in which AI can influence what a voter sees, how the voter thinks, and how the voter trusts.
Amupitan stressed that though AI would not decide the next elections, this should not conceal the disruptive power of the technology.
But the INEC chairman noted that AI would shape the information environment in which citizens form their choices, influence the speed and security of electoral logistics, and alter the tactics of both democratic actors and anti-democratic disruptors.
“The greatest threat we face is not the hacking of a ballot box, but the hacking of the voter’s mind,” he said.
Amupitan maintained that generative AI has reduced to near zero the cost of producing convincing deepfakes, including videos of candidates.
The INEC chairman said such fake videos convey messages that people never said, while INEC officials are seen to be giving false instructions.
He said: “If a voter cannot distinguish between truth and a synthetic lie, the foundation of informed consent crumbles.”
Amupitan stressed that a well-timed deepfake video or cloned audio recording of a candidate, an election official or a security chief could announce a false candidate’s withdrawal, a postponement of the election, or inflammatory ethno-religious statements, and spread virally within minutes.
According to him, malicious actors could also impersonate the INEC Chairman, Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), and other officials to issue fake guidelines, declare unauthorised results, or instruct voters to stay home.
The INEC chairman stated that the commission had created an AI Unit within its ICT Directorate, equipped with real-time digital monitoring tools, deepfake detection software, and data analytics expertise to track technical threats and information manipulation targeting the electoral process.
He affirmed that as a foundational policy, no critical electoral decision, result collation, voter accreditation or candidate qualification would ever be fully automated or delegated to an autonomous system.
Amupitan explained that any AI tool or automated system deployed by the commission for logistics, database management or operational support must undergo rigorous audits to guarantee explainability, fairness, and security before deployment.
The INEC chairman said the commission was also working on a Digital Strategy to audit the information environment and partnering with technology platforms for the rapid debunking and labelling of AI-generated content touching on electoral processes.
He said the Commission did not view AI only through the prism of risk, noting that public discourse on the subject often defaulted to alarmism.
According to him, an overemphasis on threats risks obscuring the opportunities the technology offers to improve election administration and deepen participation.
Amupitan described AI as a powerful force multiplier for administrative precision, predictive planning and institutional integrity.
Announcing the Commission’s logistical arrangement for the elections, the INEC chairman said AI-driven geospatial analytics could help it deploy ad hoc workers, vehicles, boats and sensitive materials to 176,846 polling units before 7:30 a.m. on Election Day, by analysing traffic patterns, weather forecasts, road conditions, and security incidents to generate optimal routes.
He maintained that while human collation remained the statutory standard for declaring results, AI could perform parallel statistical audits on polling unit result sheets uploaded through the eEC8A, flagging mathematical inconsistencies, atypical entry patterns and image quality defects for administrative review.
Amupitan also said AI-enhanced Automated Biometric Identification Systems (ABIS) were accelerating the detection of facial and fingerprint duplicates in the National Register of Voters, which holds over 103 million records, to protect the principle of “one voter, one vote”.
He noted that Natural Language Processing tools could translate voter education materials, polling unit locators and Permanent Voters Card (PVC) collection guidelines into dozens of indigenous languages, including audio formats for visually impaired and low-literacy citizens, while automated tools could help map accessibility barriers for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs).
The INEC chairman said AI-driven threat detection could protect the commission’s digital platforms, including the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the INEC Candidates Nomination Portal (ICNP), by identifying and isolating cyber threats in milliseconds.
He stressed that the commission’s innovations were building on a decade of technological reforms, including the Smart Card Reader (SCR), the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), and IReV, which he said have eliminated legacy vulnerabilities, such as ballot box stuffing, manual accreditation fraud and arbitrary result manipulation.
Amupitan announced that the commission had digitised candidate nominations, processing over 15,000 nominations across 22 political parties, introduced online voter registration for the first time in Nigeria, and was executing a decentralised, multi-phased PVC collection exercise nationwide.
He also said the 2027 general election would be the largest democratic exercise on the African continent, involving over 103 million registered voters across 774 local government areas, and that 10 of the 14 major operational milestones under the Electoral Act 2026 had been successfully executed.
Amupitan stressed that safeguarding the election should not be the responsibility of INEC alone.
The INEC chairman urged technology companies, including Meta, X, Google, TikTok, and Telegram, to rapidly restrict unlabelled synthetic media impersonating election officials, candidates, or security personnel, enforce disclaimers on political advertisements, and restrict micro-targeting based on ethnicity, religion or local origin.
He proposed the expansion of an Electoral Information Integrity Coalition comprising INEC, civil society organisations, the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), the Nigeria Fact-Checking Coalition (NFCC), media houses, and telecom operators, to serve as an early-warning network against viral AI-generated falsehoods.
Amupitan promised that INEC would also work with the National Orientation Agency (NOA), civil society groups and the media to incorporate AI media literacy into voter education to ensure that citizens can “pause, verify, and confirm” before sharing sensational content.
He urged political parties and candidates to sign an Ethical AI Code of Conduct that commits to refrain from deploying deepfakes, synthetic impersonation, dark ads or automated botnets.
Amupitan also asked civil society groups and development partners to audit algorithmic transparency and track digital campaign spending, while security agencies were asked to build specialised capacity in cybercrime investigation and digital forensics within the bounds of the rule of law.
He said the judiciary should prepare for novel disputes involving AI-generated evidence, and media organisations should establish internal digital forensic desks to verify user-generated content before publication.
According to him, algorithms have no moral compass, no civic duty and no constitutional oath, adding: “They do not have a conscience, they do not have a country, and they do not have a vote.
“On election day in 2027, it will be the thumbprint of the Nigerian citizen, guided by their own will and their own hopes, that decides our future.
“INEC’s job is to ensure that the voice of the people is heard clearly, above the noise of the machines.”
