The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has blamed some of its registration officers for the inclusion of suspected artificial intelligence-generated photographs and other irregularities in its preliminary register of voters.

INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode, disclosed this today during an appearance on a live programme, saying some registration officers allegedly used their login credentials to introduce questionable records into the commission’s database.

Bayode explained that the commission uncovered the irregularities through its Automated Biometric Identification System, which was deployed to scrutinise the registration records.

He said the officers involved were spread across different states, adding that their access to the registration system enabled them to introduce the questionable entries.

“We have registration officers on the field. And these registration officers, they have login details to log into the system.

“So what we have found is that some of these registration officers, not all of them now, some of them across the states nationwide, they’ve done different things to bring these irregularities onto the register,” he said.

The INEC director explained that while some of the photographs were generated using artificial intelligence, others resulted from poor registration practices.“Some of these pictures are AI-generated.

Some of them not AI-generated, but very bad registration. And this thing got into the register by the registration officers and because they have access to register people,” Bayode stated.

He added that the commission had identified the questionable records and established how some of the irregularities occurred.

However, Bayode said he could not determine the reasons behind the actions of the registration officers responsible for the entries.

“When the ABIS was run on the system, we saw these people. We know what they did. We know how they did it. But honestly, I don’t know why,” he added.