With Nigeria’s next general election still more than two years away, the warning coming out of Abuja this week is that the battle for the country’s democratic future has already begun — and it is being fought in the information space. At the opening of a two-day summit on electoral information integrity, the European Union and the International Press Centre (IPC) sounded an urgent alarm about the growing threat of disinformation, deepfakes, and AI-generated political manipulation. The summit, themed “Beyond the Ballot: Safeguarding Electoral Information Integrity in the Age of AI,” brought together election officials, journalists, civil society groups, security agencies, tech platforms, and fact-checkers. The message from EU Ambassador Gautier Mignot and IPC Executive Director Dr. Lanre Arogundade was clear: Nigerian democracy could be hollowed out without a single ballot being altered, without any election official breaking the law, and without any violence at a polling unit. As Mignot put it, a fabricated announcement can send voters to the wrong location, a false claim about results can deepen suspicion before verified information reaches the public, and the immediate target is information while the deeper target is trust. What makes this moment different, they stressed, is not just the speed at which lies travel, but how easy artificial intelligence has made it to create and spread believable falsehoods — from fake audio recordings of political leaders to synthetic videos that are almost impossible to distinguish from reality.
The EU ambassador acknowledged that information manipulation during elections is not unique to Nigeria; it is a global phenomenon affecting Europe and Africa alike. But he urged the audience not to reduce the problem to technology alone. While AI makes deception easier to produce and harder to spot, a misleading message does not need sophisticated technology to cause harm, and uncertainty about whether a recording is AI-generated should not stop anyone from checking whether the instruction it contains is genuine. The real task, he insisted, is broader than detecting deepfakes. It is to build an electoral and information environment in which reliable information is available, institutions communicate credibly, independent journalism can flourish, and manipulation meets a prepared response. This means investing in timely public information, supporting independent fact-checking, and building stronger capacity to address harmful content in local languages. Mignot then outlined three key priorities for Nigeria as it prepares for the 2027 polls: early preparedness before pressure mounts, operationalising local and international partnerships, and protecting fundamental democratic rights while safeguarding the information space. He warned that election day is too late to establish verification contacts, clarify responsibilities, or agree on who can authorise a public correction. Those arrangements, he said, should be developed and tested now — not in the heat of the campaign.
The ambassador also made a strong case for preserving democratic freedoms while fighting disinformation. Journalists must retain their editorial independence, and fact-checkers must remain free to reach their own conclusions without political pressure. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must communicate strictly within its authority, while platforms that host political content must explain their decisions and provide appropriate routes for review. Perhaps most importantly, Mignot warned that efforts to counter misinformation must never be used as a cover for suppressing political criticism, silencing inconvenient reporting, or treating political disagreement as a threat. A citizen questioning an institution is not necessarily spreading misinformation, he said, and a journalist reporting a failure is performing a democratic function. Countering manipulation must never become a justification for censorship. The EU, he clarified, remains committed to supporting Nigerian-led solutions without dictating political outcomes. His words were a reminder that the cure for bad information is not less free speech, but more transparency, more credible institutions, and more accountable public communication.
IPC Executive Director Dr. Lanre Arogundade then brought the discussion home with hard data, painting a sobering picture of how much the landscape has shifted since Nigeria’s 2023 elections. Citing figures from the Nigeria Fact-Checkers Coalition, he recalled that 63 per cent of presidential and national assembly claims reviewed in 2023 were entirely false, and that false claims reached secondary social media platforms in an average of just 11 minutes. Voter turnout in that election fell to 26.7 per cent, the lowest since 1999 — a sign, he suggested, that a polluted information environment does real damage to participation. Arogundade also cited a survey showing that out of Nigeria’s 148 million internet users, 52 per cent get their political news primarily from social media, with the figure rising to over 82 per cent in the South-East. There, more than four in ten voters did not verify the political information they received before acting on it. He went on to warn about dangerously emerging threats: voice cloning that can put words into the mouths of public figures, forged result sheets that look official, and the growing practice of dismissing authentic evidence as “AI-generated” in order to dodge accountability. These developments, he said, no longer belong to science fiction; they are here, and they are being used to manipulate public perception in ways that could make the 2027 elections far more dangerous than anything seen before.
Arogundade’s response to this threat was not more hand-wringing, but a concrete call to action. Awareness alone, he said, is insufficient. Nigeria needs a trusted, coordinated, rights-respecting system that enables institutions to anticipate threats, verify evidence, escalate incidents, and communicate authoritatively. He proposed the establishment of an Electoral Information Integrity Response Protocol and urged summit participants to adopt what he called the “Abuja Commitment” — an operational framework to be put in place well ahead of the 2027 elections. This framework would connect INEC, security agencies, political parties, media organisations, tech platforms, telecommunications operators, fact-checkers, and civil society in a shared system of rapid response. It would mean knowing in advance who is responsible for what, how false information gets flagged, how official responses are issued, and how the public can verify claims before they spread. Arogundade acknowledged that INEC had recently announced important steps, including the creation of a new AI unit and an assurance that algorithms would not decide the 2027 vote, but he stressed that institutional announcements alone are not enough. All institutions, systems, and people must be ready, with safeguards in place long before voting begins. The point was not to predict every lie that might be told, but to make sure that when lies do spread, the response is fast, credible, and coordinated rather than chaotic.
The summit itself, organised by the IPC along with partners and supported by the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria, was designed to turn awareness into practical commitment. Over two days, participants were expected to move beyond declarations and begin constructing the infrastructure of information integrity for the next election cycle. The stakes could not be higher. If the warning from Abuja is heeded, Nigeria can enter 2027 with systems in place to protect voters from manipulation, to hold platforms accountable, and to ensure that verified information reaches the public before falsehoods take root. If not, the consequence may not be the overturning of an election result, but something more subtle and more dangerous: a citizenry so confused, so weary of lies, and so distrustful of every source that it no longer knows what to believe. The European Union and the IPC made it clear that this outcome is not inevitable. But the time to act is now, not on election eve. Building trust, as Ambassador Mignot reminded everyone, takes patient work; destroying it takes only one well-timed lie. The choice before Nigeria is whether to let that lie be written during the quiet years before the campaign, or whether to build the defences that ensure truth has a fighting chance when the ballots are finally cast.