KEY POINTS

• Police have arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, accused of creating and circulating an AI-generated voice recording falsely attributed to President Bola Tinubu.
• The manipulated audio was attached to a video of social media activist VeryDarkMan and widely shared online.
• Investigations found that the original video did not contain the fake audio, raising concerns about misinformation and AI-generated content.

The Nigeria Police Force has arrested a man identified as Ifechukwu Dennis for allegedly creating and distributing an artificial intelligence-generated voice recording falsely presented as the voice of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The arrest was announced on Thursday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, through a post on his official X account.

According to Onanuga, the suspect was responsible for generating and circulating the fake audio recording, which was subsequently shared across various social media platforms and presented as a leaked conversation involving the President.

He stated that a special investigative team operating under the Inspector-General of Police successfully tracked and arrested the suspect after days of investigation into the source of the controversial recording.

How the Controversy Started

The controversy began on May 27, 2026, when a video linked to social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), went viral online.

In the manipulated version of the video, an AI-generated voice that closely resembled President Tinubu’s voice was heard making several controversial and inflammatory remarks. The fabricated statements allegedly suggested that insecurity in Nigeria’s South-East region was intentional, claimed that the President pressured Peter Obi to withdraw from the 2023 presidential election, and implied indifference toward the hardships faced by Nigerians.

The recording quickly generated widespread reactions, with many social media users believing it to be authentic.

Subsequent investigations by several media organisations and fact-checkers revealed that the controversial audio was entirely fabricated.

Reports showed that VeryDarkMan never posted the voice recording on his social media platforms. Instead, an unknown individual extracted footage from one of his original Instagram videos and superimposed the AI-generated voice over the footage before recirculating it online.

The findings established that the viral clip had been deliberately altered to mislead viewers and create the impression that the President had made the statements contained in the recording.