What began as a viral drama between TikTok personalities Asherkine and Rebecca over the weekend has now triggered alarm within Nigeria’s digital and legal communities. And for good reason.
A video surfaced showing Rebecca allegedly in a private moment with a man named “Kennedy,” who claimed to be her boyfriend. But Rebecca pushed back hard—denying his identity and stating outright that parts of the video were AI-generated. Her Snapchat clip was allegedly spliced, misused, and circulated as a sex scandal.
Many laughed. But experts didn’t.
“We’re now seeing weaponised AI reach ordinary Nigerians,” says Salihu Abbas, a Lagos-based digital forensics specialist. “But the more serious danger is where this goes next: to people with real power, real legacy, and real enemies.”
That warning is not abstract. According to multiple digital intelligence sources, a sophisticated blackmail ring operating from Eastern Europe is actively shopping an AI-assisted video involving a prominent northern figure, reportedly timed to derail a major court decision due soon.
One security source familiar with the case said the file appears designed “to generate outrage and moral collapse around someone known for institutional or religious integrity.”
Though the individual has not been named, investigators say the playbook matches global disinformation campaigns: an intimate clip (real or not), doctored audio, moral framing, and leak via Telegram, then TikTok or Facebook, just before a moment of legal or symbolic restoration.
“It’s a digital coup disguised as scandal,” said a civil society organisation founder.
The government, too, has taken note. In May, the Federal Ministry of Communications warned about the spread of AI deepfakes designed to impersonate high-profile Nigerians within the business, politics and religious space, labeling them a threat to national stability and public trust.
Meanwhile, civil society voices are calling for restraint. A joint WhatsApp campaign tagged #BeforeYouBelieve is circulating quietly across the North, urging citizens not to forward, comment on, or engage with unverified media, especially in an election or court season.
“Shame is now a strategy,” one cleric said in a sermon recently. “And those who forward it are no better than those who made it.”
If the Rebecca case taught us anything, truth is no longer the entry point for scandal. Technology is.
And what may seem like entertainment today… could become a reputational assassination tomorrow.
The government must choose to either strongly regulate like most of the western world or let the Nigerian people be entertained by lies. Nigeria must protect its moral fabric before it collapses under the weight of fake evidence.
