Nigeria’s electoral commission has defended its plan to use artificial intelligence in the January 2027 general election, even as it investigates AI-generated photographs and other irregularities in the preliminary voters’ register.
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Joash Amupitan said AI can strengthen election management, but warned that generative tools also create new opportunities for manipulation. Daily Post reported on November 2.
Speaking at the Beyond the Ballot Summit in Abuja, Amupitan said AI is “not an enemy of democracy” and is already used by election bodies worldwide to manage large voter databases, improve logistics, support planning, analyse data and increase administrative efficiency.
He argued that the technology could help INEC handle the scale of Nigeria’s electoral operations, including processing voter registration records and coordinating election logistics.
Amupitan nevertheless cautioned that the widespread availability of generative AI has lowered the cost and technical barrier for malicious actors, and said that the technology could be used to clone the voices of public figures and produce realistic fake audio or video of election officials making false announcements.
The warning follows complaints that some records in the preliminary voters’ roll contained AI-generated photos, duplicate entries and names of deceased people. His comments came amid public concern over the quality of the commission’s preliminary register ahead of the vote.
The commission is also preparing its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, including 57,000 newly procured devices, while auditing electronic result-management systems to improve transparency in the transmission of results through the INEC Result Viewing portal.
Nigeria is scheduled to hold presidential and National Assembly elections in January 2027, followed by governorship and state assembly polls in February. INEC has registered nearly 11 million new voters, bringing the expected electorate to more than 103 million.
