Ahead of the 2027 general elections, Bloomwit Africa has warned that the elections may be the first in the country’s history to be held with generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

The group said that with generative-AI fabrications already circulating and 96.5 per cent of internet users on encrypted WhatsApp, the cost of faking a damaging story has collapsed, while the cost of catching it has not.

Bloomwit Africa raised the concern in its new strategic communications and reputation report, pointing out that fabricated audio, video, and images of Nigerian public figures have already appeared and spread, and the country’s electoral and data-protection authorities have publicly identified AI-generated disinformation, deepfakes, and political profiling as threats to the process.

The report frames 2027 around a single structural imbalance, emphasising: “The cost of fabricating a damaging association has collapsed, as generative tools make a convincing fake cheap and quick. The cost of distributing it has collapsed too, as encrypted, high-trust networks carry it instantly. But the cost of detecting and correcting it has not fallen at all.”

Preparation, the report argues, is the only thing that closes that gap, and it cannot be improvised once the cycle is live.

The key indicators in the strategic communications and reputation management report include the reality that 96.5 per cent of Nigerian internet users are on WhatsApp, the highest platform penetration in the market, ahead of TikTok (89.7 per cent) and Facebook and Instagram (89.2 per cent each).

The report noted that much of the country’s most consequential political conversation happens inside these closed, encrypted channels, maturing privately before it ever surfaces publicly.