Artificial Intelligence and the Paradox of Electoral Integrity in Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election

Nigeria's 2023 Presidential Election represented the country's most technologically ambitious electoral exercise, with the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) to enhance voter accreditation, transparency, and public confidence. Yet the election revealed a fundamental contradiction: technologies introduced to strengthen electoral integrity became, in practice, sources of suspicion and contestation. Existing scholarship has largely examined electoral technologies and AI-driven disinformation as separate phenomena, leaving insufficient attention to how their interaction shapes perceptions of electoral integrity. This study addresses that gap by examining the paradoxical relationship between Artificial Intelligence, digital technologies, and electoral integrity in Nigeria, using the 2023 Presidential Election as a case study. Guided by the Cyber-Elections framework and employing a qualitative content analysis, the study analyses official reports, judicial decisions, election observer reports, fact-checking evidence, and relevant academic literature. The findings reveal two interrelated paradoxes. First, the infrastructural paradox demonstrates that although BVAS significantly improved voter accreditation, IReV's failure to upload presidential election results in real time, together with inconsistent official explanations for the failure, weakened public confidence in the results collation process. Second, the informational paradox shows that the same digital platforms that expanded civic participation also enabled AI-generated deepfakes, coordinated disinformation, and misinformation, creating competing narratives among state institutions, political actors, and citizens regarding the credibility of the election. The paper argues that electoral integrity in the digital era depends not only on technological innovation but also on the interaction between infrastructural reliability, institutional transparency, effective communication, political trust, and digital literacy. It concludes with five policy recommendations aimed at strengthening electoral technology, legal and regulatory frameworks, institutional communication, digital literacy, and independent oversight to enhance the credibility of future elections in Nigeria.