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| All Progressive Congress |
On Saturday, October 24, 2026, as the All Progressives Congress prepared to flag off its presidential campaign for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election bid in Kaduna State, the party’s Presidential Campaign Council issued a stark warning.
Spokesperson Dele Alake accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) of orchestrating a “well-orchestrated, devious plan” to discredit the event, Tinubu, Kaduna Governor Uba Sani, and other APC leaders through fake news, artificial intelligence-generated content, deepfake videos, and counterfeit documents.
The statement framed the alleged effort as part of a broader desperation by an opposition force “incapable of winning any election,” urging Nigerians to remain vigilant against what it called mindless propaganda and subterfuge. The claims come at a pivotal moment: the official campaign window for the January 16, 2027, presidential election is underway, with Tinubu seeking a second term on the APC platform against Atiku on the ADC ticket and other contenders, including Peter Obi.
The Specific Allegations
According to Alake, the campaign of misinformation began in the preceding 24 hours. One incident involved a photograph of a security vehicle on routine patrol near an APC campaign billboard in Kaduna metropolis. The APC claimed opposition actors twisted this into a narrative that security agents were specially deployed to protect the party’s billboards.
The distorted story allegedly appeared in a national newspaper described by the council as having an anti-government and anti-APC editorial stance. Atiku then shared it on his official social media handles, the statement said, in a coordinated bid to generate traffic and trends.
A second example involved a purported letter circulating online, allegedly written by Governor Uba Sani to the Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari. The document claimed the Kaduna State Government had released ₦2.3 trillion to host the rally. Alake dismissed this as a “senseless and utterly baseless lie that defies logic and basic common sense.”
He provided fiscal context: the combined Kaduna State budgets for 2024 (₦458.271 billion), 2025 (₦790.439 billion), and 2026 (₦985.9 billion) still fall short of ₦2.3 trillion. “How much is the entire annual revenue of Kaduna State, or any state, for that matter, that a state would spend ₦2.3 trillion to host a rally?” Alake asked. Independent reporting on Kaduna’s finances aligns with the scale of these figures; the 2026 budget has been reported in the range of roughly ₦986 billion to nearly ₦2 trillion in some presentations focused on broader frameworks, but the core point—that ₦2.3 trillion vastly exceeds realistic single-event spending—holds.
The APC further warned that more material, including old, doctored, and deepfake videos intended to depict public resentment, would likely surface as the rally progressed later that day.
“We know these two scenarios are only a part of the grand plan,” Alake stated. “The ADC and Atiku’s hirelings have also perfected plans to circulate old, doctored, and deepfake videos as the rally gets underway later today to show purported resentment by the people. We hereby use this opportunity to alert the general public about this malicious and ignoble plan.”
Broader Political Context
The accusation arrives against the backdrop of a polarized 2027 contest. Tinubu, the incumbent, is campaigning on the continuity of economic reforms initiated in his first term, including subsidy removal and currency adjustments that have brought both macroeconomic shifts and significant public hardship.
Atiku, a perennial contender who previously ran under the PDP, secured the ADC presidential ticket in mid-2026 after defeating other aspirants. The ADC has positioned itself as a key opposition vehicle, drawing figures frustrated with the traditional major parties.
Tinubu and Atiku share a long, complicated history in Nigerian politics—sometimes allies, more often rivals—spanning decades of shifting party affiliations and power struggles. Kaduna holds particular strategic weight. As a major northern state and former capital of the North, it carries symbolic and electoral importance.
Governor Uba Sani, an APC ally, has overseen efforts to consolidate the party’s presence. Reports of defections by lawmakers and supporters into the APC around the same period underscored the party’s push to strengthen its northern foothold.
Dele Alake himself is a longstanding Tinubu associate, a former Lagos State commissioner for information and strategy during Tinubu’s governorship, and now both Minister of Solid Minerals Development and campaign spokesperson. His role bridges governance and messaging, giving the statement institutional weight within the APC structure.
The Rising Threat of AI and Deepfakes
What elevates this episode beyond routine campaign sparring is the explicit focus on artificial intelligence and deepfakes. Nigerian electoral stakeholders have grown increasingly alarmed about these tools in the run-up to 2027.
Just days earlier, in mid-October 2026, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), civil society groups such as Yiaga Africa, technology companies, and partners held an AI and Democracy Forum in Abuja. Participants warned that deepfakes, cloned voices, synthetic media, and coordinated disinformation could undermine voter trust and electoral integrity.
INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan emphasized that “the greatest threat we face is not the hacking of a ballot box, but the hacking of the voter’s mind.” The commission has established a specialized AI unit to monitor digital threats and detect deepfakes. Microsoft committed to integrating INEC’s candidate list into its systems to help restrict misleading synthetic images of candidates. Forums have called for ethical codes of conduct by parties, better labeling of AI-generated content by platforms, stronger moderation in Nigerian languages, and public education on spotting manipulated media.
These concerns are not abstract. Fact-checkers have already documented AI-generated or manipulated political content circulating in Nigeria in recent years, including fabricated videos and images tied to political narratives.
The low barrier to creating convincing deepfakes—combined with high social media penetration and limited digital literacy in some communities—creates fertile ground for rapid amplification of falsehoods before corrections can catch up.
In this light, the APC’s preemptive public alert serves dual purposes: defending the Kaduna event and positioning the party as a guardian against technological manipulation. Whether the specific incidents were indeed coordinated by Atiku’s camp or the ADC remains unverified in the statement itself; the claims rest on the APC’s interpretation of the photo, the newspaper report, Atiku’s social media activity, and the circulating letter. No independent forensic confirmation of deepfakes or direct attribution beyond the party’s assertion was provided at the time of the statement. Atiku and the ADC had not issued an immediate detailed public rebuttal in the early hours after the release.
Implications for Democratic Trust
Nigerian elections have long featured intense propaganda, rumor, and media warfare. What is new is the technological sophistication. When a routine security patrol photo can be reframed as evidence of favoritism, or a fabricated multi-trillion-naira letter can gain traction, the information environment becomes harder for ordinary citizens to navigate. The risk is not only short-term damage to a single rally but cumulative erosion of public confidence in political communication and institutions.
For the APC, the Kaduna flag-off is intended as a show of strength in the North. For the opposition, any narrative of elite excess or coercive protection of party symbols could resonate with voters feeling the pinch of economic reforms.
Both sides have incentives to shape perception aggressively. The mutual accusations that have already surfaced in the 2027 cycle—including earlier claims and denials around security threats—illustrate how quickly the contest can turn toxic.
The real value for the public lies less in accepting any single party’s narrative wholesale and more in developing habits of verification: checking primary sources, cross-referencing budgets and official records, scrutinizing the provenance of images and videos, and remaining skeptical of highly emotional or perfectly timed “leaks.”
Platforms, media houses, and electoral bodies all share responsibility for faster response and clearer labeling.
As the Kaduna rally proceeded and the broader campaign intensifies, this episode highlights a defining feature of the 2027 race. The battle is no longer only over policies, performance records, or regional arithmetic. It is also over the integrity of the information that reaches Nigerian voters. In an environment where synthetic media can be produced quickly and cheaply, the capacity of citizens to distinguish signal from noise may prove as consequential as any traditional get-out-the-vote machinery.
The APC has sounded an alarm. Whether it prompts greater collective vigilance—or simply becomes another partisan talking point—will help shape the quality of the democratic conversation ahead.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers Global, News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Politics and Technology.
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