The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash O. Amupitan 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.”
“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,” he said.
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.
