The Nigeria Police Force has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, the man alleged to have created and circulated an AI-generated voice note falsely presented as a leaked recording of President Bola Tinubu.
The President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, announced the arrest in a post shared on his official X account on Thursday, June 4.
“The IGP crack team has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, who originated the fake voice recording that he passed off to unsuspecting members of the public as President Tinubu’s voice. Dennis was arrested in Benin. The police will issue an official statement,” Onanuga wrote.
The arrest brings to a close a week-long controversy that began on May 27, 2026, when a video featuring social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), went viral.
In the manipulated clip, an AI-generated voice resembling that of President Tinubu was heard making inflammatory claims, including allegations that insecurity in the South-East was deliberate, that he had pressured Peter Obi to withdraw from the 2023 presidential election, and that he was unconcerned about the hardships facing Nigerians.
However, investigations by several news organisations later established that VDM did not publish the doctored audio. Reports indicated that an unidentified individual extracted footage from VDM’s original Instagram video and superimposed the AI-generated voice recording before recirculating the altered version across social media platforms.
