Nigeria 2027 Election: “Result collation, voter accreditation…will be handled by humans, not AI”—INEC Chairman

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, has declared that algorithms will not decide the outcome of the 2027 General Elections.

He insisted 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 stated that technology must remain an instrument for serving human agency, institutional efficiency, and administrative transparency.

“Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote,” Amupitan said. “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.”

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.

Prof. Amupitan described the upcoming election as the largest democratic exercise on the African continent and one of the most complex administrative undertakings in the world. The massive electoral map features over 103 million registered voters and 176,846 polling units spread across all 774 Local Government Areas.

The complex administrative feat will require multi-tiered balloting spanning presidential, national assembly, governorship, and state assembly elections.

Operational Milestones Achieved

The Commission has already executed ten of the fourteen major operational milestones stipulated by the Electoral Act 2026. As part of these strategic preparations, INEC has procured additional Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) units to strengthen polling integrity.

Furthermore, the commission says it has successfully digitised candidate nominations through the INEC Candidates Nomination Portal (ICNP), processing over 15,000 nominations across 22 political parties, while simultaneously introducing online voter registration for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history.

Rather than defaulting to alarmism, the INEC Chairman outlined strategic opportunities to leverage AI to optimise election administration. These advancements include predictive logistics, route optimisation, automated result audit assistance, biometric database hygiene, multilingual voter engagement through Natural Language Processing, and AI-driven cybersecurity defence.

However, he firmly affirmed the Commission’s commitment to the Human Oversight Principle. He stressed 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,” Amupitan said, specifically warning against the threats posed by generative AI.

The forum, co-convened by INEC and Yiaga Africa, brought together a high-level delegation, including the Chairperson of the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions and Chairman of Senegal’s Electoral Commission, Mr. Abdoulaye Sylla, alongside members of the diplomatic corps, political parties, civil society organisations, and technology companies.