The Nigerian Police Force has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, identified as the originator of an AI-generated voice note that was widely circulated online as a leaked recording of President Bola Tinubu.
Presidential Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga announced the arrest on Thursday in a post on his official X account, stating that the IGP crack team apprehended Dennis, who created the fake voice and passed it off to his gullible targets as President Tinubu’s voice.
Dennis was apprehended in Benin, Edo State, following investigation into the source of the manipulated audio.
On 27 May 2026, the Presidency condemned a video posted by popular social media critic Martins Vincent Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan, VDM, in which he allegedly played a leaked voice note of President Bola Tinubu purportedly begging opposition politician Peter Obi to step down ahead of the 2023 election.
At the time, Onanuga labeled the clip a complete fabrication and called for swift legal action against the social media commentator for spreading deep fake content.
“This VDM needs to face the weight of the law for being the conveyor and disseminator of a fake audio of President Tinubu. This is a clear case of an egregious abuse of the social media platform,” Onanuga had tweeted.
Reacting on the evening of the presidency’s condemnation, VeryDarkMan, who revealed he was out of the country at the time, dismissed the allegations.
He expressed anger over the position taken by the presidential spokesman and claimed the entire controversy was part of a coordinated agenda by the authorities to target him.
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Investigations by multiple news organizations, however, established that VDM had not posted the doctored audio.
An unidentified individual had extracted footage from VDM’s original Instagram video and superimposed the AI-generated voice notes before recirculating the manipulated version online.
Despite this, the Presidency had initially called for VDM’s prosecution.
Onanuga had described the incident as “a clear case of egregious abuse of the social media platform,” drawing criticism after fact-checkers confirmed VDM’s original video contained none of the fabricated audio.
Further details on the circumstances of Dennis’s arrest and the charges he may face were not immediately available at the time of filing this report.
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