Artificial Intelligence Liability In Nigeria: A Forerunner - TheNigeriaLawyer

A comprehensive legal analysis indicates that Nigeria’s current judicial and regulatory framework is insufficient to address liability arising from artificial intelligence-related harms. The study, authored by Confidence Mbang for TheNigeriaLawyer, argues that existing common law principles and statutory instruments are ill-equipped to provide meaningful redress to victims affected by AI-caused incidents. The article identifies three primary features of artificial intelligence that complicate liability attribution: opacity, autonomy, and distributed agency. Opacity refers to the black-box nature of machine learning models where outputs are untraceable to inputs, making fault determination difficult under traditional negligence standards. Autonomy describes the ability of systems to make decisions independent of pre-programmed instructions, while distributed agency involves multiple actors in the development chain, diluting responsibility across developers, vendors, and operators. Although Nigeria has introduced policies such as the National AI Strategy 2024 and the Draft Code of Practice for Artificial Intelligence led by the National Information Technology Development Agency, these measures lack binding legislative force. Existing laws including the Nigerian Data Protection Act 2023 and the Cybercrimes Act 2015 are applied imperfectly, often leaving victims without compensation. Sector-specific illustrations highlight these failures, particularly in finance where discriminatory credit scoring occurs and in healthcare where diagnostic errors involving AI tools lack clear accountability mechanisms. Drawing comparisons with the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act and the United Kingdom’s evolving regulatory posture, the analysis suggests that Nigeria faces doctrinal, structural, and institutional gaps. While the EU employs a risk-based architecture and the UK utilizes a principle-based approach, Nigeria currently lacks the technical literacy within courts and regulators necessary to enforce oversight effectively. The author calls for urgent scholarly and legislative attention to bridge these voids before harms accumulate across the nation’s digital economy.