Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts have warned that Nigeria, with its current jump into AI without putting in place governance, security, and ethical standards, faces the risk of turning a technological breakthrough into a national vulnerability.
Speaking at the 2025 Africa’s Beacon of ICT Merit & Leadership Awards (ABoICT 2025), Chief Visionary Officer of cybersecurity firm Digital Encode, Prof. Peter Obadare, warned against the growing trend of “AI washing”, where companies market basic automation tools as AI to cash in on industry hype without delivering real technological substance or oversight.
AI governance involves setting policies, regulations, and guidelines that ensure the responsible and ethical development, deployment, and use of AI technologies.
“Everything is being called AI today, from photography apps to simple automation tools. But no one is talking about AI governance. That’s a dangerous gap,” Obadare said during his keynote speech on ‘AI Governance, Standardization and Cybersecurity in the AI Era’.
Like internet, like AI
Drawing parallels to the early days of the internet, Obadare recalled how the now-ubiquitous TCP/IP protocol was built without cybersecurity considerations, a mistake he warned must not be repeated in the AI era.
“We’re repeating the same error, rushing ahead without embedding security and governance into the architecture. Governance is not a brake to stop movement; it’s a brake to make movement safe,” he said.
- Obadare cited global standards such as ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 38507, advocating for responsible AI innovation anchored in ethics and trust.
- He emphasized the need to secure AI’s foundational elements, data, algorithms, and infrastructure, as part of a national security imperative.
Adding to the conversation, Spectranet’s Chief Operating Officer, Amrich Singhal, echoed similar concerns in his address titled “Responsible AI and Nigeria: Balancing Innovation, Regulation, and Cybersecurity.”
- Singhal warned that the countries most likely to benefit from AI are not those with the most advanced models, but those with the most trusted systems.
“AI can boost productivity, yes, but it can also clone voices, spread disinformation, and undermine democracy. It’s no longer a question of readiness, it’s a question of urgency,” he said.
Poor regulation
Singhal acknowledged Nigeria’s unique advantage—a young, digitally savvy population and growing AI adoption across sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education, and energy.
However, he criticized Nigeria’s current regulatory landscape, including the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and NITDA’s 2023 draft AI framework, as “underdeveloped, underfunded, and poorly enforced.”
- Both speakers emphasized that governance failures, not technological flaws, lie at the heart of many global AI missteps.
- From Microsoft’s racist chatbot Tay, to Amazon’s gender-biased AI hiring tool, to the Uber autonomous vehicle fatality, Prof. Obadare pointed out that these were not just bugs, they were failures of oversight and design.
He also highlighted recent cybersecurity lapses, including the 2023 breach of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the leak of DeepSeek’s API keys on launch day, noting: “The danger isn’t just in the algorithms; it’s in how we build, test, and deploy them.”
What you should know
Nairametrics recently reported that the United Nations (UN) had expressed concern that only seven countries are currently involved in the governance of AI and making decisions that affect other countries.
The UN Secretary-General’s High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence stated this in its final report titled “Governing AI for Humanity.”
According to the report, the seven countries involved in AI governance for the rest of the world include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The UN body added that the development of AI cannot be left to the “whims” of the market alone, adding that governments must play an important role in regulating the technology.
