The Media and Information Literacy & Intercultural Dialogue (MILID) Foundation will convene a virtual expert panel to explore the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on the 2027 general election in Nigeria and the role of Media and Information Literacy (MIL).
Themed Minds over AI: MIL and Nigeria’s 2027 Election, the event will hold in partnership with Roundcheck, a fact-checking organisation, to mark the 2025 UNESCO Global MIL Week.
As Nigeria heads into another election year in 15 months, conversations and concerns around the integrity of the process continue to emerge, especially with the influence of artificial intelligence among the Nigerian voting population.
The 2023 general election and the events that surrounded it give an insight into what the 2027 run will look like, especially as technology continues to advance and various AI software have become easily accessible and usable. The 2023 election witnessed the deployment of deepfakes and coordinated disinformation campaigns to influence the outcome. The impact of these actions remains to be fully determined or understood.
The foregoing underlines the importance of this conversation, said Chiamaka Okafor, Executive Director of MILID Foundation.
“One thing we are assured of in 2027 is that we will have a population that is heavily impacted by artificial intelligence. Now we must worry about what this impact will translate into in terms of the credibility of the elections,” she noted.
Suraj Olunifesi an associate professor of mass communication at the University of Lagos and global co-lead UNESCO University Network on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue, will open the conversation as lead discussant, bringing on board decades of experience from the MIL and communication space.
Hannah Ajakaiye, journalist and founder of FactsMatterNG, a civic media initiative leveraging the power of social media, will join the panel. She brings years of journalism experience and fact-checking to the conversation.
Adding to the mix is Caleb Ijioma, Executive Director of Roundcheck, a fact-checking organisation building a network of young fact-checkers.
Another panellist, Lois Ugbede, brings years of experience as a reporter and now as an editor at Dubawa, a fact-checking platform of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).
To join the conversation, register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4umIuqRhR7e6XySPdpmyqQ
