On 10 April, a screenshot began to travel on X. It appeared to show the chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Joash Amupitan, answering a stranger’s post with three words: “Victory is sure.” For anyone who already believed the commission leaned toward the ruling party, the screenshot was a confirmation, but INEC debunked the claim, saying the account had no link to the chairman, that the reply carried a timestamp earlier than the post it was answering, and that the handle was renamed and locked on the day the screenshots went viral. By then the image had done its work. It had given a belief that millions already hold, that the vote is decided in advance, and the screenshot was the piece of evidence.
A screenshot of a viral post attributed to INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan, which the commission later debunked as fraudulent.
There is an already Low Voter Turnout
More than 93 million Nigerians were registered to vote in February 2023. Roughly a quarter, about 25 million, did, a turnout of 26.7%, the lowest of the Fourth Republic. Bola Tinubu won with 8.79 million votes. Atiku Abubakar had 6.98 million. The gap between them was 1.81 million votes. Meaning that the 70% of registered voters who stayed home in 2023 are the biggest deciders in Nigerian politics if they decide to vote and get to vote. This already existing low voter turnout, and any targeted narrative, like that of the INEC chairman’s alleged post, can further extend the margin of low voter turnout in the 2027 elections.
Why did so many stay home last time? Chikodiri Nwangwu, a political scientist at the University of Nigeria, explained that there was “insufficient voter education,” he said, and material arrived late, and some voters “might have stayed away because they were scared.” Then he drew the larger inference. “The failure to turn up could be read as a vote of no confidence in the Nigerian state.”
Yiaga Africa’s executive director, Samson Itodo, has been direct about what follows. Speaking in Abuja in January after a survey on public trust, he said: “With no trust in the electoral process, do not expect any high turnout in the next elections.”
The reading from Yiaga’s own December 2025 voter intention survey is more nuanced. It sampled 1,500 adults across every state and the FCT, with a margin of error of about 4.3 percentage points. 77% said they wanted to vote in 2027. 45% had confidence in INEC to run a credible election, 34 % did not, and 42% named fear of violence as their main barrier. “The challenge for 2027,” Itodo said, “is ensuring that the 77% who want to vote can actually do so safely.”
In a National Elections and Democracy Perception Survey CJID is conducting (from June) of more than 14 thousand respondents, 32% have indicated that they are they do not intend to vote, or they are simply unsure if they will vote in the upcoming elections.
Results from the CJID National Elections and Democracy Perception Survey (14,309 responses) on voter intention: 68% plan to vote on election day, 16.6% do not, and 15.4% remain unsure.
There is a clear problem. The people who say they will vote and then do not is the territory on which an apathy message operates. It does not need to convert anyone. It needs to nudge a person who is already wavering, already doubtful, already expecting disappointment, and this is what DAIDAC has been observing.
Doubt: “The Election will be Rigged”
DAIDAC have monitored a trend: a collection of 774 distinct posts that use the phrase “elections will be rigged,” running from April 2026 to October 2026 on X. These posts have clear evidence of organic push, as most of the post made in the same month, same day, same hour, and in some cases within the same minute.
Dataset showing coordinated posting times and metadata of X posts using the phrase ‘elections will be rigged ‘; the area encircled in purple shows very close timing of the posting.
Of the 774 posts with visible view counts, it has attracted almost 55k views. It appears that the goal is to make users see, to just view and confirm their already existing belief. “What is the use of voting when the elections will be rigged by INEC and the gang?” one account asked in May 2025. Another, in March 2025: “We may as well all just join APC or go home.” Across the data, the simplest and most widely held belief is that the vote is already decided.
An X post exemplifying the recurring narrative that the 2027 elections are predetermined, reinforcing voter doubt and driving political apathy.
The most striking thing about the data is how specific it is. The posts do not complain, in general, about politicians. They describe a system. INEC declares. The courts ratify. The loser is told to go to the tribunal. Two posts in 2025 state outright that the 2027 result will be declared for the sitting president. One from April 2026 predicts that “whoever they want will be announced and you will be asked to go to court.”
Yet even as doubt spreads, counter-narratives persist. Some users maintain hope in the electoral process, arguing that growing public awareness and opposition strategies will make large-scale rigging harder to pull off.
A post on X arguing against the narrative that the 2027 elections will be rigged, illustrating the active counter-discourse monitored in DAIDAC’s investigation.
Evidently so, CJID’s ongoing National Elections and Democracy Perception Survey confirms this growing belief: when asked what poses the biggest threat to free and fair elections, a plurality of respondents (30.8%) pointed to rigging, closely followed by vote buying (26.3%).
Results from the CJID National Elections and Democracy Perception Survey (14,348 responses) on the biggest threat to free and fair elections, with rigging (30.8%) and vote buying (26.3%) cited as the primary concerns.
If, on 16 January or in the days after, INEC’s portal shows one thing and the declared result at the polling unit another, nobody will wait for the explanation about network failure. The story will already be written, and, as the posts show, a person who thinks the result is fixed has a ready reason to stay home and not vote. In the chairman’s own words at the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum in Abuja, “the greatest threat we face is not the hacking of a ballot box, but the hacking of the voter’s mind.” Yet even with the electoral body’s deliberate effort to reinstate trust, CJID survey reveals that 38.3% trust INEC to conduct free, fair and credible elections in 2027, while 35.7% do not, and 26% remain unsure.
Ethnic Grievance; voter apathy
DAIDAC’s investigation reveals a distinct ethnic dimension underpinning the narrative strategy designed to induce voter apathy ahead of the 2027 elections. Across platforms like YouTube, coordinated content propagates the claim that “Igbos intend to boycott the elections.” Monitoring of 11 core accounts with 8k views and an expanded network of 23 channels drawing over 98k views shows a concerted effort to persuade southeastern voters that their participation is either unwelcome or futile.
A YouTube video thumbnail advancing narratives of ethnic voter boycott in southeastern Nigeria, illustrating online content monitored by DAIDAC that feeds into ethnic grievance and political apathy ahead of the general elections.
On X, this campaign takes a more insidious form through the weaponisation of “Igbophobia.” While 645 monitored posts across various accounts lack central coordination, they collectively construct a cohesive narrative linking systemic ethnic hostility directly to electoral disenfranchisement.
Dataset showing X posts referencing Igbophobia and elections, highlighting the structured narrative linking ethnic hostility to political disenfranchisement ahead of the 2027 polls.
Up to a quarter of these posts cite historical precedents, such as voter suppression during the 2023 Lagos governorship election, subsequent market fires, and property demolitions, as proof of an anti-Igbo political environment. A single influential account posted multiple iterations claiming INEC intentionally manipulated results due to anti-Igbo bias, garnering over 111,000 views and even hosting an X Space. As DAIDAC’s previous investigation into anti-Igbo disinformation networks highlighted, leveraging real past trauma converts organic ethnic grievance into a powerful driver of political withdrawal.
An X Space discussion on Igbophobia, illustrating the online discourse and targeted narratives monitored by DAIDAC surrounding ethnic sentiment ahead of the elections.
This narrative strategy succeeds because the underlying grievance is grounded in documented realities. The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report noted that during the 18 March 2023 Lagos elections, ruling party supporters intimidated voters in Igbo-dominated areas, suppressed turnout in key LGAs, and attacked journalists without subsequent legal accountability.
Hamza Ibrahim, Senior Disinformation and Information Disorder Researcher at CITAD, provided a clear analytical framing of how narratives were used to push for voter apathy. He explained that “by continually recycling these incidents, disinformation networks bridge legitimate historical frustration with preemptive defeatism for 2027”, he said. One post from February warns that Igbophobia is being readied as a campaign strategy for 2027. Another, from January, argues that public relations around Obi is being built on anti-Igbo sentiment, including in Northern mosques.
Dr Joe Okei Odumakin, who acknowledges this reality, remains worried about hate speech, ethnic and religious profiling, and how it can be weaponised by social media. She said: “My greatest concern ahead of the 2027 general elections is the possibility of political competition degenerating into hate speech, ethnic and religious profiling, misinformation, character assassination and violence. “Elections should be a contest of ideas, policies, competence and character, not a war between ethnic or religious groups.
AES Radio Voter Apathy Campaign in Northern Nigeria
DAIDAC’s election observers have confirmed Hausa-language radio programmes, broadcast from the Niger Republic into Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto that promote voter apathy ahead of Nigeria’s general elections, alongside other narratives that observers regard as threats to the country’s stability. “Daandè Liptako (The Voice of Liptako) is the name of the radio channel, and listeners in Kebbi, Katsina and Sokoto occasionally pick up the over-the-air signals from neighbouring AES hubs from 94.0 FM (Broadcasting from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), 92.2 FM (Broadcasting from Niamey, Niger),” the monitor confirms. DAIDAC found the station was originally used by Radio France Internationale (RFI), which was seized after the French network was banned by the junta-led states and also operates on YouTube and Facebook. For context, Hausa is spoken by an estimated 40 million people in northern Nigeria, according to HumAngle’s reporting on the Niger-linked influence campaign, and by millions more across the border in Niger. That border runs for more than 1,500 kilometres, much of it porous, and cuts through communities that share kin, markets and radio dials. A broadcaster in Niamey does not need a transmitter aimed at Katsina. The audience is already there.
The Niger junta understands this. On 25 December 2024, General Abdourahamane Tchiani went on state television, Radio-Télévision du Niger, and addressed Nigeria directly in Hausa, accusing France and Nigerian authorities of links to a base in Borno, arms supplies to Boko Haram and a training camp for the Lakurawa group in Sokoto. HumAngle reports that the claims were not supported by credible evidence. In June 2025, he returned for a three-hour address in Hausa, Zarma and French, repeating accusations that Nigeria was working with France and the United States on terrorism.
Did the people believe? HumAngle surveyed respondents in Kano State and found that half believed Tchiani’s claims, 30 per cent were undecided, and 20 per cent rejected them. The Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, in a 29 September analysis by Mark Duerksen, picked up the same finding. A Kano civil society worker who monitors social media explained to HumAngle why the denials struggled to compete. “People said, ‘We always knew France was behind this,'” Muhammad Hamza said. “Tchiani just confirmed what they already believed.” The Nigerien leader was not persuading Nigerians of something new. He was attaching an explanation to a suspicion that was already present: that Nigeria’s leaders are close to France, that the West is behind the country’s insecurity.
DAIDAC’s own investigation, on Russia’s Playbook, has initially traced the ecosystem of Hausa-language content that frames the West as parasitic and Vladimir Putin as a protector. It identified a Niger-based Hausa-language Facebook page, Damagaram Post, with roughly 303,000 followers, and found sponsored trips to Russia for journalists, conferences, and training funded by a Russian state agency. The Moscow-based news agency African Initiative, which analysts at CNAS and elsewhere link to Russian intelligence, runs through Telegram, RuTube and its website, according to Kate Johnston of the Centre for a New American Security. Her assessment, published in December 2025, is blunt. “Russia is winning the battle for influence in the information space across huge
Aliyu Dahiru Aliyu, the Editor of Northwest and Extremism at HumAngle, explains that the radio campaign against democracy is calculated. “What Niger and Russia are doing is not complicated,” he said. “They are creating the conditions under which Nigerian citizens begin to see their own government as the enemy.”
How this Could Impact the Election
All the details gathered for this investigation report did not clearly outline that these narratives will change who wins. What it shows is a set of pressures on things that determine whether a vote is credible: who turns out, who accepts the result, who is safe on the day, and who is trusted to say what happened. Even worse, the rigging posts, the TikTok videos, the Hausa broadcasts and the fear of identity-based violence all point at the same group: people who already doubt that voting matters or that it is safe. Elsewhere, the identity stories do the same work: a voter who fears being targeted for being Igbo, Yoruba or Fulani in the wrong place has a reason to stay home.
Additionally, with 18 candidates, a fragmented opposition and a hard-fought race, a contested result is very possible. If it happens, the narratives have been rehearsed for months: the process was rigged, it was rigged against the people, and the umpire answers to foreign interests. This ultimately weakens democracy and future trust in elections.
Way Forward
Radio stations in the border states, community radio and religious broadcasters are the natural carriers for plain-language explanations of how to vote and how results move. This is what DAIDAC is already doing with its programme “Takar Gaskia” (integrity pillar) in 5 northern states but has to be scaled to other parts of the country. Also, since the National Broadcasting Commission cannot sanction a transmitter in Niamey, the federal government, ECOWAS and the National Communications Commission can raise cross-border broadcasting through diplomatic and technical channels.
On platforms. X, TikTok and Meta can look at the small group of accounts that supply most of the reach in ethnicised election content, at impersonation of electoral officials, and at the repeat use of real newspaper mastheads for AI-generated fakes.
As just a few months remain until the elections, the narratives examined here are not going to disappear, and for the most part they are not lies that can be corrected. They are explanations people reached for because institutions left gaps. These stories persist because they sound like answers, says Hamza. Adding that “the only reliable reply is to fill the gap with something more credible, in the same languages: results that can be checked, an electoral commission that explains itself, and a campaign in which candidates are held to what they promised to do about incitement.”
