- AI must remain servant, not master, of Nigerian democracy, Amupitan says
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash O. Amupitan, SAN, has declared unequivocally that algorithms will not decide the outcome of the 2027 General Elections, insisting that the sovereign will of the Nigerian people remains the sole determinant of who governs the country.
Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum 2026 in Abuja, themed “Safeguarding the 2027 General Elections in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Amupitan said technology, however sophisticated, must remain an instrument for serving human agency, institutional efficiency, and administrative transparency.
“Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote,” he said. “The choice of who leads Nigeria belongs exclusively to the Nigerian people. Algorithms may predict patterns; they may optimise routes, and they may even suggest preferences. But they do not have a conscience, they do not have a country, and they do not have a vote.”
The forum, co-convened by INEC and Yiaga Africa, brought together the Chairperson of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions and Chairman of Senegal’s Electoral Commission, Mr Abdoulaye Sylla; members of the diplomatic corps; National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners; heads of sister election management bodies across Africa; international development partners; political party leaders; civil society organisations; media executives; security agencies; technology companies; and members of the academic community.
With exactly 92 days to the 2027 General Elections, the INEC Chairman acknowledged that AI will undeniably shape the information environment, influence electoral logistics, and alter the tactics of both democratic actors and anti-democratic disruptors.
“While algorithms will not decide the vote, AI will undeniably 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,” he said.
Prof. Amupitan described the 2027 General Election as the largest democratic exercise on the African continent and one of the most complex administrative undertakings in the world, with over 103 million registered voters, 176,846 polling units across 774 Local Government Areas, and multi-tiered balloting spanning presidential, national assembly, governorship, and state assembly elections.
He noted that INEC has already executed ten of the fourteen major operational milestones stipulated by the Electoral Act 2026, procured additional BVAS units, digitised candidate nominations through the INEC Candidates Nomination Portal (ICNP), processing over 15,000 nominations across 22 political parties, and introduced online voter registration for the first time in Nigeria.
Rather than defaulting to alarmism, the INEC Chairman outlined opportunities for AI to optimise election administration, including predictive logistics and route optimisation, automated result audit assistance, biometric database hygiene, multilingual voter engagement through Natural Language Processing, and AI-driven cybersecurity defence.
He, however, affirmed the Commission’s commitment to the Human Oversight Principle, stressing that no critical electoral decision, result collation, voter accreditation, or candidate qualification will ever be fully automated or delegated to an autonomous system.
“Human accountability, statutory oversight, and judicial review will remain paramount at every stage of the electoral chain,” he said.
Prof. Amupitan identified generative AI, deepfakes, synthetic media, micro-targeting, dark ads, algorithmic bias, and automated cyber attacks as profound and asymmetric threats to electoral integrity.
“The greatest threat we face is not the hacking of a ballot box, but the hacking of the voter’s mind,” he warned. “If a voter cannot distinguish between truth and a synthetic lie, the foundation of informed consent crumbles.”
He announced that INEC has established a specialised 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.
The INEC Chairman called for a synchronised, multi-stakeholder ecosystem to safeguard the 2027 elections, urging political parties to sign an Ethical AI Code of Conduct; civil society to audit algorithmic transparency and track digital campaign spending; security agencies and the judiciary to build specialised capacity in cybercrime investigation and digital forensics; and the media to establish internal digital forensic desks to verify user-generated content before broadcast.
He also proposed an Electoral Information Integrity Coalition comprising INEC, civil society organisations, the Nigerian Guild of Editors, the Nigeria Fact-Checking Coalition, media houses, and telecom operators as an early-warning network against viral AI-generated falsehoods.
Returning to the forum’s guiding question, Amupitan said the 2027 vote will be decided by “the young market woman in Aba, the farmer in Sokoto, the teacher in Ibadan, the tech innovator in Yaba, Lagos, the fisherman in Bayelsa, and the student in Maiduguri.”
“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,” he said. “INEC’s job is to ensure that the voice of the people is heard clearly, above the noise of the machines.”
He concluded by affirming that the future of democracy must not be determined by what technology can do, but by what a free people, through their laws and institutions, decide technology ought to do.
Cc: Yiaga Africa
