I've never seen a crew screw up an AP malfunction which is why I'm sceptical in this instance.
What I often see is the crew will just ignore it, pretend nothing is wrong, and keep flying. However if they do decide to deal with it it is straight forward to end up with the correct result. Although in doing so they will often lose SA and end up somewhere geographically they didn't intend to be, or miss something else more important that should be dealt with first (like cancelling a fire tone without confirming a fire whilst continuing to deal with the AP problem).
However in saying all this it is a very long time since I've flown in Nigeria so if there is a Nigeria thing at play here is not factored into my thinking or recent experience.