Some 93 million registered Nigerian voters will go to the polls on Saturday, February 25, 2023, to elect a new president who will take over from 80-year-old Muhammadu Buhari whose less-than-impressive eight-year reign comes to an end May 29. But the hope of a brighter future being nursed by many Nigerians may not materialise if the electorate do not vote right, according to the results of predictions by an Artificial Intelligence platform which give a glimpse into what the near future will look like.
Results of the predictions, unveiled Wednesday by Neusroom, an online news and media platform, show a not-so-desirable future for the country. The results were disturbing and not reflective of the kind of country citizens want Nigeria to be in the future.
To get the predictions, Mid Journey, an image-generating Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, was deployed to paint a picture of what Nigeria would look like in the near future.
“These results were from the AI platform’s assessment of our past and present,” Mike Miller, executive creative director, X3M Ideas, said.
“We told Mid Journey (an image-generating AI platform) to show us what Nigeria would look like in the nearest future and the results we got were not desirable of the kind of country we want Nigeria to be in the future,” Miller said.
The unveiling of the results comes as part of a voter awareness and sensitisation campaign targeting young people whose future would be most affected by the outcome of the 2023 elections.
The campaign, supported by X3M Ideas, aims to galvanise national awareness to increase the number of young voters in the upcoming general elections.
Nigeria’s economy has been on a nosedive in recent years, with rising unemployment (33.3 percent or 23.18 million people), multidimensional poverty (63 percent or 133 million people), high rate of inflation (21.84 percent as at January 2023), cost of living crisis, among other negative indices, and the country’s young electorate (18-34), who make up 39.65 percent (37 million) of the 93.4 million registered voters, have mostly borne the brunt.
“As a socially conscious media platform, Neusroom has partnered with X3M Ideas on this voter education and awareness campaign to hopefully inspire Nigeria’s young population to civic action,” said Michael Orodare, editorial lead at Neusroom.
“It is not enough to have the right to vote as a registered voter, what is more important is to utilise the right to bring reform into government by choosing leaders who will deliver a working future for all,” he said.
The campaign will use images generated by the AI platform for awareness messages across online platforms and on billboards in different parts of Lagos, Nigeria, and Neusroom and X3M Ideas say they hope that young Nigerians can prove the AI results wrong by going out to vote for leaders who will transform the country and create the desired future.
