The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council has accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) of plotting to sabotage the party’s presidential campaign flag-off in Kaduna, an event that was scheduled to take place on Saturday, October 24, 2026. According to a statement issued by the council’s spokesperson, Dele Alake, and reported by Blueprint, the opposition figures were allegedly deploying a toxic mix of fake news, artificial intelligence-generated content, deepfake videos and counterfeit documents to manipulate public opinion and undermine the APC’s grand opening rally. The statement claimed that the disinformation machinery had already been activated in the 24 hours leading up to the event, suggesting a deliberate, coordinated effort to tarnish the image of President Bola Tinubu, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State and the party leadership. The allegations arrive at a moment when Nigeria’s political temperature is already dangerously high, with parties jockeying for advantage ahead of the general election. What makes this particular episode unsettling is not simply the familiar exchange of accusations between political rivals, but the specifically digital and high-tech nature of the alleged campaign. The APC council is essentially warning that voters can no longer assume that photographs, videos or official-looking documents tell the truth. In a country where social media already amplifies rumour and tribal sentiment, the introduction of sophisticated falsification tools raises profound questions about trust, transparency and the future of democratic campaigns. The council’s language is pointed and unapologetic, and it clearly intends to set the narrative before the rally even begins, painting its opponents as desperate actors willing to do anything to remain relevant.
The first specific incident cited by the APC campaign council centres on a photograph that appeared to show a security vehicle driving past an APC campaign billboard in Kaduna metropolis. On the surface, the image might seem entirely innocuous, a routine moment captured by chance. But according to Dele Alake, the photograph was deliberately presented in a misleading context to suggest that security personnel had been specially deployed to protect the APC’s billboards. The implication was that the party needed state protection, or worse, that government security agencies had been militarized to serve the interests of the ruling party. The APC council rejected this interpretation as pure propaganda, insisting that the vehicle was simply on a routine patrol and happened to pass near the billboard. Alake further alleged that the misleading narrative was first published by a national newspaper and then amplified by none other than Atiku Abubakar on his official social media platforms. That sequence, if true, would indicate a carefully structured effort to give the false story the appearance of legitimacy by moving it from a seemingly credible news source to the social media feeds of a well-known political figure. The photo itself speaks to a broader phenomenon in modern political communication, where a single image, stripped of its original context, can be weaponized to confirm the biases of a targeted audience. It is a reminder that seeing is no longer believing, and that every visual artifact from a campaign rally must be examined with suspicion. The APC campaign council is clearly trying to train the public to question what they see online, even as it on this occasion calls out what it considers a smoking gun of opposition deception.
The second alleged incident involves a far more audacious invention. According to the APC council, Atiku and the ADC circulated a purported letter allegedly written by Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani and addressed to Senator Abdulaziz Yari, the Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council. The fabricated document supposedly claimed that the Kaduna State government had released a sum of N2.3 trillion to host the APC rally. Such a figure is not merely outrageous; it is almost incomprehensible in the context of Nigerian state finances. Dele Alake pointed out that the alleged amount exceeds Kaduna State’s entire combined budgets for 2024, 2025 and 2026. To drive home the absurdity, he provided the actual budget figures: N458.271 billion for 2024, N790.439 billion for 2025 and N985.9 billion for 2026. Adding all three together gives a total of roughly N2.2346 trillion, which still falls short of the N2.3 trillion mentioned in the fake letter. In other words, the opposition was asking Nigerians to believe that a state government would spend more on a single political rally than it had allocated for all the services, infrastructure projects, salaries, education and healthcare it promised over three full years. Alake expressed astonishment at the boldness of the lie, saying the campaign council was at a loss to understand how anyone could imagine and concoct such a senseless fabrication. The episode reveals how disinformation can exploit public unfamiliarity with budgetary processes, presenting an inflated, unverifiable number to create outrage and doubt. For the average Nigerian voter, the letter might have seemed like evidence of misuse of public funds. For the APC council, it is simply a badly executed hoax that collapses under the weight of arithmetic.
Beyond these two incidents, the APC Presidential Campaign Council warned that the alleged disinformation campaign is part of a much larger grand plan. Alake stated that the opposition was prepared to circulate old, doctored and deepfake videos during the actual flag-off ceremony in order to create the false impression that residents of Kaduna were opposed to the event. He said that the council expected even more misleading content to emerge as the rally got underway, and that the two incidents already exposed were only a small sample of what the public might encounter. This warning speaks directly to the growing vulnerability of elections to high-tech manipulation, where artificial intelligence can generate realistic footage of events that never happened or alter existing footage in ways that are nearly impossible to detect. The potential consequences are severe. If fake videos suggest that a rally was poorly attended, that supporters were hostile, or that violence broke out, the damage to a political campaign could be immediate and hard to undo even after the truth is established. The APC council’s statement appears designed to preempt this damage by alerting the public before the rally takes place, essentially telling Nigerians to expect a flood of falsehoods and to treat any negative footage with caution. Whether this strategy will protect the APC or simply deepen public cynicism remains to be seen. But the admission that political actors are prepared to use deepfake technology to deceive voters is a chilling sign of the times. It suggests that the battlefield of Nigerian elections has shifted decisively onto the internet, where bytes and pixels may be just as powerful as votes cast at polling stations.
In addition to detailing the alleged disinformation, the APC campaign council launched a sharp personal attack on Atiku Abubakar and the ADC. Alake described Atiku and the ADC, which he called the former vice president’s special-purpose vehicle, as being incapable of winning any election through legitimate means. He accused them of being willing to pull any strings, no matter how despicable and atrocious, in a desperate bid to remain relevant and to grab power at all costs. This is strong language, even by the standards of Nigerian political rhetoric, and it reflects the deep rivalry between the ruling party and the opposition. Atiku, who has run for the presidency multiple times, is no stranger to political combat, and his supporters would likely reject the APC’s characterisation as caricature. But the APC campaign council is not concerned with balanced assessment; it is seeking to frame the upcoming election as a choice between order, truth and progress on one side, and desperation, deception and opportunism on the other. For the former vice president, the accusation that his campaign is willing to use deepfakes and counterfeit documents is a serious reputational challenge, one that could resonate with undecided voters who are already wary of fake news. Yet the use of such incendiary language also carries risks for the APC. It could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of weakness, and it may invite even more aggressive counterattacks from the opposition. In a heated political atmosphere, accusations multiply quickly, and the public is left to sort through competing narratives that each party insists are true. What is clear is that the battle between the APC and Atiku is not being waged only in stadiums and campaign halls, but in the contested space of public memory and perception.
Ultimately, the APC Presidential Campaign Council’s statement is an appeal to the Nigerian public to remain vigilant and to verify the information they encounter before sharing it. Dele Alake called on citizens to treat reports and videos relating to the Kaduna campaign flag-off with caution, especially those that seem designed to shock or provoke anger. He urged Nigerians not to allow themselves to be used as instruments of disinformation, and to remember that the opposition’s alleged goal was to mislead the public and discredit the APC. There is a certain irony in this appeal, because political parties routinely manipulate information for their own benefit, and the APC’s warning is hardly a disinterested act of public service. Still, the underlying message has genuine urgency. In a world where artificial intelligence can now produce convincing images of people saying and doing things they never said or did, the ancient ideal of informed citizenship becomes much harder to sustain. Voters must be more discerning, more patient and more skeptical than ever before. They must ask who benefits from a story, what evidence supports it and whether it has been independently confirmed. The Kaduna flag-off may ultimately be remembered as a successful APC event, or it may be overshadowed by a storm of conflicting claims about what actually took place. But in a broader sense, the episode highlights the central challenge of modern democracy: the need to protect the integrity of information itself. As Blueprint reported, the statement was signed by Dele Alake on behalf of the APC Presidential Campaign Council on October 24, 2026, and it leaves the public with a sobering question. In an age of deepfakes and synthetic media, how can citizens know what to believe? The answer may lie not in trusting any single party, but in cultivating a vigilance that questions all sources, including those that claim to be defenders of truth.