ICIR NIGERIA
AFTER the leaked audio conversation allegedly between Peter Obi, the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential election, and David Oyedepo, the founder of Living Faith Church (Winners Chapel), The ICIR has observed conflicting rebuttals from Obi’s team.
A Nigerian media platform, Peoples Gazette, had published an exclusive report and audio conversation alleging that Obi solicited the support of Oyedepo to get votes from Christians in South-West ahead of the March 25 presidential election.
“Daddy, I need you to speak to your people in the South-West and Kwara, the Christians in the South-West and Kwara,” Obi said in the audio reportedly obtained by The Gazette.
“This is a religious war,” the audio quoted Obi to have told Oyedepo.
The leaked phone conversation, which was published on April 1, caused a stir among Nigerians, with a large number of people expressing outrage over what they perceived as Peter Obi’s undisclosed religio-political agenda. Some people also doubted the leak, arguing that it was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Peter Obi, who secured third place in the recently concluded presidential election, has consistently presented himself as an open-minded candidate who was running not on the basis of his ethnic or religious background, but on his commitment to promoting national progress.
While some Nigerians are speculating that the leaked audio may have been generated using AI that can be used to mimic human voices, others have pointed out some inconsistencies in the conversation as evidence that the audio is not authentic.
For instance, some Twitter users argued that the audio must have been created by AI tools like Microsoft AI tools such as Vall-E and Eleven Labs.
However, an analysis using Deepware, an AI tool used to detect alterations in audios and videos doesn’t reveal any alteration in the audio but the effectiveness of the software is still under question.
In addition, some individuals raised doubts as to why the recording began before Oyedepo answered the call, as well as why Obi stated Onitsha as his polling location instead of Agulu, his place of origin.
But findings showed that Obi was actually in Onitsha two days to the March 25 presidential election, lending further credence to the audio’s potential authenticity.
Controversial rebuttals: Private audio conversation or deepfake ?
Rather than debunking the purported leaked audio, the spokesman for the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Kenneth Okonkwo, quickly weighed in and said Obi was simply asking Oyedepo to help him pass a message to voters.
Okonkwo, who described the audio as “a private conversation between the duo”, said Obi was merely asking Oyedepo to mobilize support for him ahead of the election.
His statement read, “Our attention has been drawn to the publication of this audio tape of private conversation between Peter Obi and Bishop Oyedepo. It is not surprising that these political criminals are trying to spin the conversation as if Obi was making a religious statement.
“Firstly, the context of the conversation was aptly put by Bishop Oyedepo when he said, “All Nigerians have equal stake in this nation; nobody has the right to claim that he is dashing something to someone.”
