As the world braces for dozens of elections in the coming years, experts warn of a looming “storm of disinformation” powered by AI-enhanced tools. In Slovakia, for example, a deepfake audio clip purporting to expose electoral fraud was quickly debunked—yet, as the World Economic Forum noted, “the damage had already been done.” AI-generated content—videos, voices, text—can cross borders almost instantly, exploiting the lag in fact-checking. With over 50 countries holding elections between 2025 and 2026, including major democracies and Nigeria’s 2027 polls, the scale of this threat is unprecedented. In this context, collaboration across governments, tech platforms, and civil society is urgent. As a recent WEF analysis emphasized, we face an “expanding cyber-attack surface” and must urgently upgrade our tools to protect democracy.
Nigeria is not immune. Its electoral bodies and political landscape are already under cyber threat and disinformation fire. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reported repeated hacking attempts on its systems. In 2022, the commission disclosed that its results portal (IReV) came under attack from “hackers across the world,” with probes traced as far as Asia. The Nigerian government revealed that nearly 13 million cyberattacks were recorded during the 2023 election cycle—peaking at almost 7 million on election day alone. These attacks ranged from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and phishing to brute-force login attempts on official websites and databases. Nigeria’s nascent online voting infrastructure has already been probed relentlessly—and repelled—by hostile actors.
Domestic analysts warn that the worst is yet to come. The Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN) forecast that “INEC’s cyberinfrastructure will be targeted in the lead-up, during, and after the elections,” from website defacements to direct hacking of its BVAS voter accreditation devices. They also predict a significant amount of misinformation and disinformation on social media, possibly propagated by foreign agents hired to influence perceptions. These warnings are grounded in reality: in the 2015 elections, which saw Nigeria’s last peaceful handover, foreign data firms such as Team Jorge and Cambridge Analytica were documented running disinformation campaigns targeting President Buhari. Even in 2023, deepfaked audio clips circulated on WhatsApp and Twitter—fabricated recordings that falsely claimed to feature top candidates conspiring to rig the vote—later denounced as outright fakes. This “weaponization of manipulated information,” as CSEAN described it, seriously undermines trust in democratic institutions.
Compounding these cyber threats is Nigeria’s own social media landscape. With 122.5 million internet users—55.4% of the population—and over 31 million active social media accounts, political discourse increasingly moves online. Nigeria meets all the criteria of vulnerability to social media abuse identified by international experts: deep ethnic and regional divides, low trust in institutions, and a highly partisan media. As a recent national workshop concluded, “social media have become a real problem for our elections.” Disinformation is already “driving dissent and threatening national cohesion,” warned one democracy NGO. Most Nigerians now turn to social feeds for election news, making the information space a high-stakes battleground. In a context marked by literacy gaps, linguistic diversity (with over 250 languages), and sharp urban-rural divides, the risk is that sophisticated digital attacks could outpace our ability to respond.
The threat is multiplying. Advances in generative AI—deepfakes and large language models—supercharge disinformation. This translates into automated fakes at scale. Already, sophisticated deepfake videos and images are appearing worldwide. AP News reports that “AI-generated deepfakes have been undermining elections around the globe”—from Bangladesh to Slovakia—with a “wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia” coursing through social media. Nigerian observers fear a similar onslaught. Analysts note that modern AI video tools can take a text script and fabricate realistic video of any person speaking it. One expert describes how, in the 2027 context, “cyber thugs” could draft an inflammatory speech and have it delivered in a deepfake video by an impersonated authority figure—such as the INEC Chair—thereby sparking chaos or distrust. Likewise, audio-cloning technology can mimic voices: in the 2024 U.S. primaries, an AI-cloned Joe Biden urged New Hampshire voters not to show up at the ballot. Such tactics—now at one’s fingertips—could easily be deployed in Nigeria, for instance, via a fake broadcast of a known politician calling for chaos or a boycott.
Text-based AI brings another vector. Large language models (LLMs) like GPT can impersonate anyone in writing. Researchers have already created a chatbot impersonating a U.S. presidential candidate to solicit votes in a primary—violating platform rules. In Nigeria’s 2027 race, adversaries could similarly deploy AI chatbots or phony social media accounts masquerading as party candidates or community leaders, spreading incendiary disinformation (false withdrawals, endorsements, conspiracies) on a broad scale. Meanwhile, AI-driven microtargeting refines Cambridge Analytica’s playbook: using millions of online profiles, machine learning can sift data to identify susceptible voter groups and tailor persuasive content to them. Analysts warn that AI now enables “autonomous attack systems” that can relentlessly probe and assault networks without human intervention. These bots can launch hundreds of thousands of simultaneous intrusion attempts on voting servers or result portals, overwhelming defenses and defying attribution. In short, an anonymous AI “hive” could stage complex cyber campaigns—hacking, spam, false leaks—far beyond the capacity of yesterday’s lone hackers.
Nigeria’s concerns echo global experiences. In the 2016 U.S. election, official inquiries found that Russian intelligence operatives penetrated multiple state election systems and stole private data. Investigators reported that Russia launched cyberattacks on voting software in at least 21 states and accessed the emails of over 100 election officials. The stolen DNC emails were selectively leaked to undermine a candidate. Simultaneously, political firms like Cambridge Analytica harvested social data on tens of millions of Americans to micro-target campaign ads using psychological profiling. U.S. policymakers described this mix of data engineering and hacking as “information warfare”—a poorly regulated “Wild West” of online influence. One senator warned that, without checks, foreign actors could buy divisive political ads or use illicit data to covertly steer elections.
Similar tactics have appeared globally. In the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum and 2017 election, covert ad campaigns and Russian-backed troll farms were documented. In the EU’s 2019 vote, digitally altered images and social bots emerged, often traced to foreign networks. Across Asia and Africa, governments report foreign interference: AI-generated campaign videos recently targeted Bangladesh and Moldova’s leaders. In Moldova, President Maia Sandu was a frequent target of online disinformation created with AI. In Nigeria’s own backyard, Kenya and Uganda have seen viral AI clips. The bottom line is clear: no country is safe from these tactics. Attackers can experiment abroad and quickly adapt successful techniques to Nigeria’s context—exploiting social divisions and technical gaps.
All these trends converge on Nigeria’s 2027 ballot. Our past elections already reflect a fractious environment: disinformation campaigns—later debunked—depressed turnout. One post-mortem found that only 27% of registered voters showed up in 2023—the lowest ever—as people were “inundated with allegations of the real being fake and fakes being real.” The erosion of trust was so severe that even groundbreaking investigative reports were ignored because audiences assumed they, too, might be “fake.” This “liar’s dividend”—where accusing truth of being false makes everything suspect—played out in viral audio conspiracies in 2023, from phantom PDP plots to bogus Labour Party recordings. In other words, seeing is no longer believing.
In 2027, these dangers are compounded: generative AI makes deception cheap, fast, and hard to trace. Imagine mass-market deepfakes of politicians begging for votes, or subversive spectrograms mimicking coalition leaders. Imagine cellphones buzzing with perfectly tailored propaganda aimed at tribal loyalties or religious fears. In a country as large and diverse as Nigeria, the divisive power of such manipulation could be devastating. The integrity of our elections is not an academic concern—it is existential. As one democracy expert noted, “we have fixed the integrity of the process, but we cannot fix the lack of integrity of some people.” In other words, while advanced technology may secure the ballot count, public perception and posturing are fought on an entirely different battlefield.
To safeguard 2027 and beyond, Nigeria’s election stakeholders must act now with a comprehensive strategy. This includes hardening INEC’s digital infrastructure, regulating digital political ads, launching nationwide digital literacy campaigns, resourcing fact-checkers and rapid response teams, investing in AI monitoring, and forging partnerships with global tech platforms and allies. Above all, INEC and the judiciary must be empowered to enforce digital integrity.
Nigeria’s 2027 elections will not occur in a technological vacuum. The same AI and hacking tools that awakened global concern in 2016 are now turbocharged and widely available. The threats are real: from millions of cyber probes on INEC’s servers to the deceptive power of convincing deepfakes. But Nigeria is not powerless. By learning from international experience and proactively implementing protective measures, we can strengthen the resilience of our democracy. The time to prepare is now—before an election is decided not at the ballot box, but on someone’s laptop or phone. Nigeria cannot afford another electoral crisis. Peace, stability, and trust are essential if the country is to pursue the development goals enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Sonny Iroche is one of Nigeria’s pioneer AI experts, with a Postgraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is Chairman of GenAI Learning Concepts Ltd. and a former investment banker with over 35 years of experience, including roles at International Merchant Bank and Century Merchant Bank.
