The Nigeria Police Force has arrested Ifechukwu Dennis, the man accused of creating and circulating an AI-generated voice recording falsely portrayed as a leaked conversation involving President Bola Tinubu.
The development was disclosed on Thursday by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, in a post on X.
“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 said.
Onanuga added that the suspect was apprehended in Benin City and noted that the police would provide further details in an official statement.
The arrest follows a controversy that began on May 27, 2026, after a viral video featuring social media commentator Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), circulated online.
The altered video contained an AI-generated voice that sounded like President Tinubu and made several controversial claims, including allegations that insecurity in the South-East was deliberate, that Peter Obi was pressured to step down from the 2023 presidential election, and that the president was unconcerned about the economic difficulties facing Nigerians.
Subsequent investigations by several media organisations later established that VeryDarkMan was not responsible for publishing the fabricated audio.
Reports indicated that an unidentified individual had taken footage from VeryDarkMan’s original Instagram video, added the AI-generated voice track, and redistributed the manipulated version across social media platforms.
Despite findings that cleared the activist of involvement, the Presidency initially supported calls for legal action against him over the incident.
At the time, Onanuga described the episode as “a clear case of egregious abuse of the social media platform”, a position that drew criticism after fact-checkers confirmed that the original video posted by VeryDarkMan did not contain the fabricated audio.