The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) has approved the creation of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Division under the ICT Department to continuously harness the positive aspects of the innovation and mitigate its negative impact on elections.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun disclosed in Abuja on Thursday.
Olumekun said the division will enable the commission to better coordinate and maximise existing technology investments through centralised AI governance.
He said it will also enhance decision-making through data-driven insights, risk management and voter engagement. The INEC national commissioner added that the division will strengthen electoral credibility through predictive analytics, automation and intelligent safeguards.
He said, “Recently, the commission attended several conferences with colleagues around the continent on the impact of AI on elections. These interactions were not only motivated by the concern over the use of AI to spread fake news or manipulate content online but also to utilise its benefits for data-driven decision-making, risk detection and mitigation, deepening voter services automation and geo-spatial intelligence in support of logistic optimisation for better material distribution and polling unit allocation.
“Consequently, the Commission approved the creation of an Artificial Intelligence Division under the ICT Department to continue to harness the positive aspects of AI and mitigate its negative impact on elections.”
He stated that this was also an important step in INEC’s ongoing reform of the electoral process.
For his part, the executive director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo said the move was credible, hence it would strengthen democracy.
“The decision of INEC to create a division dedicated to Artificial Intelligence is a commendable move because this is the time when artificial intelligence is being leveraged across the world for elections administration.
“So, one is delighted to see that INEC is playing a leadership role in deploying AI in elections. I will say that as an organisation that works extensively on AI in election in Africa this is the first electoral commission on the continent that is creating a division dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. It shows that the commission is committed to exploring innovations and technology to address the question of efficiency and trust.”
According to him, INEC is leveraging AI to enhance logistics deployment and improve on transparency and trust “because you can use AI to detect fraud in results and use AI to counter disinformation.
“So there are several uses and we are delighted that INEC has created this division. We expect that this division will churn out AI models that would not undermine privacy rights or data breach but ones that would strengthen and improve the quality of our elections and by extension protecting our democracy,” he added.
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