The Nigerian Police Force has apprehended Ifechukwu Dennis, the individual identified as the creator of an AI-generated voice note that flooded the internet under the guise of being a leaked audio recording of President Bola Tinubu.
The Presidential Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed the breakthrough on Thursday through a statement on his official X handle.
Confirming the operation, Onanuga stated, “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.”
The arrest brings an end to a week-long digital storm that kicked off on May 27, 2026, when a video featuring social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), went viral.
In that specific clip, an artificial intelligence clone of Tinubu’s voice was heard making highly volatile claims—alleging that the ongoing insecurity in the South-East region was an intentional strategy, that he pressured Peter Obi to drop his ambition before the 2023 elections, and that he cared little about the economic hardships of citizens.
However, independent investigations carried out by various media platforms quickly proved that VDM was not the person who published the manipulated track.
Instead, an anonymous internet user had lifted video footage from VDM’s authentic Instagram page and carefully overlaid the synthetic AI audio onto it before sharing the edited version online.
Despite those findings, the Presidency had initially demanded that VDM face full prosecution.
Onanuga had strongly condemned the clip at the time, calling it “a clear case of egregious abuse of the social media platform”—a stance that sparked immediate public backlash once independent fact-checkers confirmed that VDM’s original broadcast contained absolutely no trace of the fake audio.
