Nigeria is experiencing a rapid expansion of artificial intelligence across finance, healthcare, agriculture, education, and other sectors, yet the country operates without any binding, AI-specific statute. This legal vacuum, highlighted in a recent policy paper by the Center for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity, leaves citizens vulnerable to automated harms ranging from deepfake fraud to discriminatory outcomes.
AI Deployment Outpaces Governance
In finance, banks and fintechs deploy AI for customer service, fraud detection, credit scoring, compliance monitoring, and digital lending. Healthcare providers use AI for telemedicine, medical imaging, diagnostics, patient management, and local medical innovation. Farmers and agritech firms rely on AI for crop analysis, agronomic advice, weather-informed planning, drone-enabled monitoring, and productivity improvements. Educational institutions adopt AI for personalised learning, skills training, tutoring support, and classroom innovation. Across telecommunications, e-commerce, manufacturing, public administration, security, energy, and transport, automated systems increasingly influence service delivery, risk assessment, citizen profiling, and decision-making.
Despite climbing 31 places in the global Government AI Readiness Index and drafting a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Nigeria lacks a legal framework. According to the policy paper, the rapid deployment is occurring in a complete legal vacuum, advancing faster than the governance architecture can respond.
Lived Realities of Unregulated Tech
The absence of binding AI legislation is causing escalating harm. First, AI-enabled financial fraud is surging, with highly convincing deepfake videos and audio recordings of prominent business leaders used to lure citizens into devastating scams. Second, AI-driven misinformation is engineered at unprecedented scale, threatening to become a force multiplier of instability in an information environment where false narratives historically fuel communal and electoral tensions.
Most disturbing is the rise of gender-based digital abuse. Evidence shows generative AI tools on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) are used to manipulate real photographs of women into non-consensual sexualised images. When victims seek justice, tech platforms routinely deflect responsibility. In digitally marginalised rural communities, vulnerable populations are exploited by applications that incentivise unauthorised filming and uploading of individuals for monetisation. When technology advances this fast without safeguards, it ceases to be neutral; it deepens inequality and erodes citizens’ dignity.
Roots of Governance Failure
Nigeria's current regulatory landscape is characterised by severe fragmentation, legal deficiencies, and a failure of institutionalisation. While the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 exists, it governs what happens to data, not what complex AI systems do with it. Algorithmic profiling, automated bias, and discriminatory outcomes largely fall outside its enforcement scope. This gap persists despite the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation explicitly flagging algorithmic bias as a material risk to financial stability.
Worse, at least nine different regulatory bodies—including NITDA, the NDPC, the CBN, the NCC, and the FCCPC—exercise overlapping jurisdiction over digital spaces. With no formal coordination mechanism, enforcement is inconsistent and reactive, allowing powerful actors to engage in regulatory arbitrage while ordinary citizens bear the consequences.
Calibrating Governance to Nigerian Realities
Skeptics argue that premature regulation will stifle innovation or that Africa should not attempt to regulate a technology it did not develop. This is a flawed and dangerous premise. Nigeria routinely regulates foreign-manufactured pharmaceuticals, aviation systems, and telecommunications equipment to protect public safety; AI should be no different. However, the wholesale import of Western frameworks, such as the European Union AI Act, which are calibrated for vastly different economic realities, must be rejected.
Governance must be designed for Nigeria's specific context, recognising profound material constraints. AI data centres are staggeringly energy-intensive, consuming hundreds of terawatt-hours globally each year. For Nigeria to bridge its electricity deficit to a level capable of supporting serious sovereign AI infrastructure, it would require an estimated $10 billion annually for a decade. Given these infrastructural gaps and heavy reliance on foreign digital stacks, regulatory focus must prioritise risk management, human rights, and citizen protection over tech-hype.
A Call to Action
To move from aspiration to safety, policymakers should execute a rights-based, context-sensitive strategy. Enact binding legislation by providing immediate presidential assent to the National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill, preserving its strict transparency and audit provisions. Establish an independent regulator—a dedicated National AI Regulatory Authority with the technical capacity and statutory teeth to audit complex algorithms. Codify citizen rights by guaranteeing individuals the legal right to an explanation and a clear appeal mechanism when harmed or excluded by automated decisions.
Mandate platform accountability by imposing steep, enforceable penalties on digital platforms that fail to swiftly remove harmful, machine-generated deepfakes and non-consensual content. Democratise oversight by institutionalising a formal role for civil society organisations to conduct independent audits, and mobilise youth networks, such as the NYSC, as digital accountability advocates and community educators.
AI governance cannot wait. Continued delay will allow digital harms to scale faster than remedies can, ceding national data sovereignty to unaccountable corporate interests. It is time to step out of the black box and establish the safeguards citizens deserve.
Godwin Agaba Ochube is a civil society analyst.
