As Nigeria rapidly embraces artificial intelligence (AI) across various sectors, experts are raising alarms about the country’s lack of robust governance, security, and ethical frameworks to guide this technological leap. Without these critical safeguards, Nigeria risks turning a promising innovation into a potential vulnerability.
Speaking at the 2025 Africa’s Beacon of ICT Merit & Leadership Awards (ABoICT 2025), Prof. Peter Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer of cybersecurity firm Digital Encode, highlighted the growing problem of “AI washing”, where companies label simple automation tools as AI to capitalize on the hype, without delivering real technological value or oversight.
“Today, everything is being called AI, from photography apps to basic automation, yet no one is seriously discussing AI governance. This gap is dangerous,” Obadare said during his keynote on ‘AI Governance, Standardization and Cybersecurity in the AI Era.’
Drawing lessons from the early internet days, he recalled how the foundational TCP/IP protocols were developed without security in mind, leading to vulnerabilities that persist today. “We must not repeat that mistake with AI. Governance isn’t about slowing progress; it’s about making progress safe,” he added.
Prof. Obadare urged Nigeria to adopt global standards such as ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 38507 to ensure AI innovation is ethical and trustworthy. He stressed the importance of securing AI’s core components, data, algorithms, and infrastructure, as a matter of national security.
Echoing these concerns, Amrich Singhal, Chief Operating Officer of Spectranet, emphasized that the countries that will benefit most from AI are those with trusted systems, not necessarily the most advanced models. “AI can boost productivity, but it can also be weaponized to clone voices, spread disinformation, and threaten democracy. The urgency for responsible AI governance cannot be overstated,” Singhal said.
While Nigeria enjoys advantages such as a young, digitally savvy population and growing AI adoption in healthcare, agriculture, education, and energy, Singhal criticized the country’s current regulatory environment. He described the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and the National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) 2023 draft AI framework as “underdeveloped, underfunded, and poorly enforced.”
Both experts agreed that many global AI failures stem from governance lapses rather than technological flaws. They cited examples like Microsoft’s racist chatbot Tay, Amazon’s biased hiring AI, and fatal accidents involving autonomous vehicles as failures of oversight and design.
Recent cybersecurity incidents, including the 2023 breach of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the leak of DeepSeek’s API keys on launch day, further highlight the risks of deploying AI without rigorous security measures.
The United Nations has also expressed concern that only seven countries, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, currently lead AI governance globally, often making decisions that affect other nations. The UN’s High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence stressed that AI development cannot be left solely to market forces and called for stronger government regulation.
