Yiaga Africa, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and other stakeholders have urged the implementation of robust safeguards against the misuse of artificial intelligence in Nigeria’s 2027 general elections, warning that deepfakes, disinformation, and cyber threats risk undermining electoral integrity.
The appeal featured in a communiqué issued yesterday following the 2026 AI and Democracy Forum in Abuja (October 14–16), which convened electoral bodies, technology firms, security agencies, civil society groups, journalists, and policymakers to assess AI’s implications for the upcoming vote.
The forum further recommended that INEC publish an election-specific AI governance framework outlining the technology’s proposed applications, inherent risks, data sources, safeguards, and the responsibilities of technology vendors.
Stakeholders also urged the commission to establish a transparent protocol for election result management, encompassing physical Form EC8A capture, AI-assisted figure extraction, electronic transmission, verification, collation, and discrepancy resolution.
The communiqué emphasized that human verification and legally prescribed procedures must remain central to electoral processes, given that errors could jeopardize voting rights, result credibility, and public confidence.
The statement recommended independent pre-election audits, stress testing of results-upload and transmission systems, and verification of technology vendors’ claims, noting that AI-generated alerts regarding duplicate voter registrations or anomalous results should prompt human investigation rather than automatic deletion, rejection, or suspension.
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