The Nigeria Police Force has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, the man alleged to have created an artificial intelligence-generated voice recording falsely presented online as a leaked conversation involving President Bola Tinubu.
The arrest was announced on Thursday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, in a post on his X account.
“The IGP’s crack team has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, who originated the fake voice recording and circulated it to unsuspecting members of the public as President Tinubu’s voice,” Onanuga wrote.
The arrest comes after a week-long controversy triggered by a viral video linked to social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM).
The manipulated clip featured an AI-generated voice resembling that of President Tinubu making a series of controversial remarks, including claims that insecurity in the South-East was deliberate, that he pressured Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi to withdraw from the 2023 election, and that he was unconcerned about the hardship faced by Nigerians.
However, investigations by several media organisations later found that VeryDarkMan did not publish the doctored audio.
Reports indicated that an unidentified individual extracted footage from one of VDM’s original Instagram videos and superimposed the AI-generated voice recording before recirculating the altered version across social media platforms.
Despite those findings, the Presidency initially called for action against the social media activist.
Onanuga had described the incident as “a clear case of egregious abuse of social media,” drawing criticism after fact-checkers established that the fabricated audio was not part of VDM’s original content.
Details surrounding Dennis’s arrest, including the circumstances of his apprehension and any formal charges against him, were not immediately available as of the time of filing this report.
