Tinubu’s cloned voice and Pate’s sanitiser duty

When he took office in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu could hardly have imagined that artificial intelligence would make him the face and voice of motivational content for young Nigerian men. Yet on Monday afternoon, my news feed was flooded with videos captioned “I for don give up but na Tinubu motivate me today” and “Monday motivation from the President.”

Most are cut-and-join clips of the President, laced with a voiceover that sounds strikingly like his. The voice drops deep quotes on why young men must double down and build a fortune for themselves.

One went: “There’s overnight success, but before you get to that night, you must learn how to cook concoction rice and drink garri with salt. The root of evil is poverty…I remember the hymn that says, ‘All things bright and beautiful.’ But how bright and beautiful can your life be when poverty is suffocating every dream you have? You think poverty is here to play with you?”

Another went: “Do you think I, Akpabio, Wike, Atiku and the rest of us started hustling last night? If that’s what you think, you’ve already failed. We had strategies. We had sleepless nights…But at some point, we moved.”

The variations are many. Some even encourage viewers to cheat their way to the top and “steal someone’s idea.” To be fair, many of the comments under them come from an audience that knows the President could not have said these things.

Having covered the President and listened to hundreds of hours of his engagements, I could tell instantly that the voice was cloned. I will not point out the giveaways. My silence won’t stop anyone determined to repurpose his voice for sinister ends, but this column won’t serve as their manual.

The real question is how many people can tell the difference. In May, an audio recording attributed to the President circulated online before it was reported to be AI-generated. Today it is motivation.

Tomorrow it could be a clone of the President’s voice or video announcing a state of emergency or a new date for the January 16 election. Yet Nigeria still has no law written specifically for deepfakes, even as INEC warns that AI-generated videos and voice notes could threaten the credibility of the polls.

The answer is not to ban creativity or criminalise satire, as repressive regimes often do. However, vague laws rarely stay aimed at their original targets. We must draw the line at deception.

For instance, content that borrows a public official’s voice should say so, plainly and on screen. Europe’s AI Act has required since August 2 that deepfakes be disclosed as artificially generated. Also, using a real person’s voice to sell anything should require their consent.

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When a parody account announces itself as an AI-generated parody, it is easier to call that free speech. However, when a clone passes itself off as the President, it becomes fraud.

If we had all day, I would tell you about the more interesting voiceovers in which the President quotes Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. But we don’t. While the President’s clone dropped motivational bars, his health minister manned the entrance to the Council Chamber on Ebola duty.

It was Wednesday, and the Federal Executive Council was meeting in an emergency session, its fifth this year and the first since August. If there is one pattern to note in this administration, it is the spontaneity of state functions like FEC meetings.

To compare Tinubu to his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, would mean succumbing to my unrepentant proclivity for comparisons. Under Buhari, an October FEC would be the council’s 44th sitting of the year. Here, it is the fifth. It is as if someone suggested, “Away with the monotony of boring FEC meetings every Wednesday; let’s keep this exciting.”

On at least two occasions, ministers had filled the chamber only for the class captain, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, to announce that the meeting would no longer hold. No reason was given beyond a promise that a new date would be announced.

So as ministers filed in on Wednesday, the Coordinating Minister of Health, Prof. Ali Pate, stood by the access door. Dressed in a white agbada and black cap, Pate watched security officials pump blobs of hand sanitiser into every palm that walked in. Of course, he had a reason to be there.

Nigeria’s first imported Ebola case, confirmed in Abuja on October 20, had only just been evacuated to Switzerland, and more than 50 contacts remained under watch. Still, it became a funny moment when the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, walked back to playfully mock the cabinet’s health prefect for the afternoon.

Inside, the reunion was animated. Ministers caught up on everything from work and family to the politics on their own sides. All you could hear were echoes of “I’ll come to your office this afternoon,” “I’ll call you unfailingly tonight,” and “I’ll send someone to get it for you.”

At 2:34 pm, President Tinubu walked in, sang the national anthem and presided over the meeting, with half his mind likely in Makkah. The following day, he departed for Makkah to perform Umrah and is expected back next week.