Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission has set requirements for human verification mechanisms and audit trails in election-related artificial intelligence, as debate turns to remedies before the 2027 vote.
The policy applies to INEC personnel and technology vendors. It calls for audit trails and testing in electoral settings. For AI, it requires human verification mechanisms; before a national rollout, the commission must approve a formal report produced after a pilot. The document does not name an AI product INEC has selected for the 2027 election.
A past dispute over election data shows why a clear record matters. INEC Chair Joash Amupitan said in a Feb. 25, 2026, speech that a viral polling-unit result appeared to show an alleged 1,219 votes for one party despite 213 accredited voters. The investigation traced the discrepancy to a handwritten correction, he said. The 121 figure was the corrected vote count for APC entered on the ward collation form.
In an Oct. 19 opinion column for Premium Times, columnist Dakuku Peterside argued that voters need a way to contest technology-assisted decisions while a correction can still protect their right to vote. He also called for rapid responses to fabricated voting notices. The examples he gave, including a false postponement notice and an incorrect voter flag, were hypothetical.
Yiaga Africa and partners including INEC held the AI and Democracy Forum in Abuja on Oct. 14-15 to discuss safeguards against election threats, including synthetic content that could mislead voters. On Oct. 15, Yiaga named Election GPT by Pawavox the Judges’ Choice Winner of the Sandbox Pitch in the Election Observation and Data category. The team will receive a ₦13 million cash prize, Yiaga said. Its proposed detection feature depends on integration with TrueMedia and is intended to flag suspicious material for human review. The award does not establish that INEC has adopted the tool.
INEC’s calendar schedules presidential and National Assembly voting for Jan. 16, 2027, followed by governorship and state assembly voting on Feb. 6.
