The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has attributed the appearance of suspected AI-generated photographs and other questionable entries in its preliminary voters’ register to the activities of some of its registration officers.
The commission’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode, disclosed this during an interview on Arise Television on Friday, explaining that some officers allegedly exploited their login credentials to introduce irregularities into the database.
According to him, the anomalies were detected through INEC’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), which was deployed to scrutinise the registration records.
“We have registration officers on the field. And these registration officers, they have login details to log into the system. So what we have found is that some of these registration officers, not all of them now, some of them across the states nationwide, they’ve done different things to bring these irregularities onto the register,” Bayode said.
He explained that while some of the questionable photographs were AI-generated, others resulted from improper registration procedures.
“Some of these pictures are AI-generated. Some of them not AI-generated, but very bad registration. And this thing got into the register by the registration officers because they have access to register people,” he stated.
Bayode added that INEC had traced the irregularities and established how some of the officers carried them out, although their motives remained unclear.
“When the ABIS was run on the system, we saw these people. We know what they did. We know how they did it. But honestly, I don’t know why,” he added.
He said the commission had commenced efforts to sanitise the register before releasing its preliminary version, stressing that the exercise was being conducted within the legally stipulated 90-day period.
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