The Nigerian Police Force has detained Ifechukwu Dennis, the man suspected of creating an AI-generated voice note that was extensively shared online as a leaked recording of President Bola Tinubu.
Bayo Onanuga, the Presidential Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, reported the arrest on Thursday in a post on his official X account.
“The IGP crack team has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, who originated the fake voice that he passed on to his gullible targets as President Tinubu’s voice,” he stated.
The arrest ends a week-long scandal that began on May 27, 2026, when a video of social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, also known as VeryDarkMan, went viral.
In the video, an AI-generated voice imitating Tinubu’s was heard making incendiary claims, such that insecurity in the South-East was intentional, that he had persuaded Peter Obi to resign ahead of the 2023 election, and that he was unconcerned about Nigerians’ suffering.
Multiple news organizations, however, found that VDM had not posted the doctored audio.
An unnamed person downloaded footage from VDM’s original Instagram video and pasted AI-generated voice notes before recirculating the modified version online.
Despite this, the presidency initially advocated for VDM’s prosecution.
Onanuga had labeled the incident as “a clear case of egregious abuse of the social media platform,” which drew criticism after fact-checkers discovered that VDM’s initial video did not include the faked audio.
Additional information about Dennis’s arrest and the charges he may face was not immediately available at the time of reporting this article.
