Tensions in Nigeria’s elections are not new, but the digital disruption has brought with it dis/misinformation at scale, further complicating an already complex election landscape and is deepening the erosion of public trust and confidence in the electoral process. On April 8th, 2026, the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Amputa Jouash, issued a warning stating that misinformation, rather than traditional electoral offenses like ballot-snatching or other irregularities, will pose the greatest threat to the 2027 General Election. His statement signifies growing awareness of the threat misinformation and disinformation pose to the election process and its impact on the electorates’ trust in the system.
A 2022 Afrobarometer survey revealed that only 23% of Nigerians trust the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while 78% expressed just a little or no trust in elections. Trust has declined routinely with an 8% decline in 2020, and a 12% decline since 2017.
Image 1: AfroBarometer Survey, 2023: Respondents were asked how much they trust the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
Often, the outcome of the erosion of public trust in the electoral process is voter apathy. In Nigeria, voter turnout has routinely declined since the start of the fourth republic.
The 2023 general election recorded the lowest voter turnout in the history of Nigerian democracy. Such a low turnout is a deeply troubling evidence of public sentiment, indicating pervasive and growing disinterest, or perhaps a loss of faith, in the national electoral system. It indicates that the citizenry feels disconnected from the process, believes their vote does not count, or perceives the system as fundamentally flawed.
The Psychology of Misinformation
During election periods, the two of the most obvious amplifiers of misinformation and disinformation in digital social circles are “authority” and “confirmation bias”. They influence public perception and trust in the electoral process. While authority bias and confirmation bias are distinct psychological phenomena, they frequently overlap and directly reinforce each other.
Authority bias is a tendency for people to be more likely to believe the positions or opinions of authority figures or experts, regardless of the actual facts. On the other hand, confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency for individuals to favor information that aligns with their existing beliefs, disregarding evidence that contradicts them. When combined, they create a powerful cycle that makes it difficult to change a person’s mind or recognize flawed logic.
In Nigeria, this has played out in its elections. The 2023 elections were rife with misinformation that scaled far more quickly than fact checkers could debunk. This pattern is not new. During the 2023 election cycle, a governor reshared a predictive electoral analysis and framed it as proof his party would win the election. The post went viral almost immediately, with many accepting the interpretation at face value simply because it came from a political authority figure, without verifying the original analysis or comparing it to similar projections for other candidates.
2027 Elections – The Igini Video Example
On April 22nd 2026, a video on social media labeled “the big reveal” of the Electoral ACT 2026 as amended went viral. In it, the Former INEC Electoral Commissioner, Mike Igini, shared during his analysis of the new Electoral Act that INEC has reintroduced something very dangerous, with the potential to allow politicians to access INEC’s serial and security features to produce their own ballot papers.
Citing Section 63 (1) and (2) of the new Electoral Act, as shown in the image below, Igini noted that this dangerous clause of “satisfied” will sabotage voting at the polling level. He further claimed that it took 20 years, until 2022, to remove the offending clause because of concerns that the “satisfaction” of a presiding officer was ambiguous, but that same clause has now been reintroduced.
However, a close review of the Electoral ACT 2022 and 2026 by DAIDAC shows that the cited section existed in the 2022 ACT, and it is not a new clause.
The 2022 and 2026 Electoral Acts only differed in the introductory word used for the provision: “if” in the 2022 version and “where” in the 2026 version. Amina Amingo, a Lawyer and Project Manager for Media in National Elections (MiNEs), commented on the legal implications of this change and confirmed that, in the course of law, the two conjunctions have no difference in interpretation.
However, within 48 hours, X was flooded with explainer and rebroadcast videos from social media influencers and activists reiterating Mike Igini’s concerns as fact. The clarion call across board is that this “new clause” provides room for politicians to print fake ballot papers for the election. Examples of such videos can be found here, here, and here.
In this case, the misinformation began with a highly well-known former INEC resident electoral commission on a reputable media house, and because Igini is a recognized legal and electoral expert, social media influencers, activists, and ordinary citizens assumed his analysis of Section 63 of the Electoral Act 2026 was 100% accurate.
For a Nigerian audience with growing distrust of the electoral process, it was easy to believe the narrative from authority figures, which aligns with their existing belief that the system is inherently fraudulent and cannot be trusted.
This is what the unholy matrimony of confirmation and authority bias looks like.
The 2027 General Election will inevitably see waves of dis/misinformation, and no one is exempt from its influence. As tensions continue to rise and distrust deepens, understanding how authority and confirmation bias shape public opinion and how it could become a vehicle for rapidly scaling misinformation will be just as important as debunking falsehoods. Fact-checking must now do more than “that was false, this is the truth and this is how to spot falsehoods next time”. Spotlighting the drivers of misinformation and the psychology and sociology that supercharge falsehoods and half-truths must be a necessary part of the media literacy curriculum.
