By Chinenye Anuforo
As artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionalises the global digital landscape, tech experts are pressing Nigeria and the entire African continent to embrace a unified, governance-first strategy for AI development.
At the 2025 Africa’s Beacon of ICT Merit & Leadership Award (ABoICT 2025) held recently in Lagos, Professor Adewale Peter Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer of Digital Encode and Amrich Singhal, Chief Operating Officer of Spectranet, independently stressed a critical point that AI without governance is a ticking time bomb.
Obadare, in his keynote “AI Governance, Standardization and Cybersecurity in the AI Era,” cautioned against AI washing, where companies mislabel basic software as AI to ride the hype, often lacking true technological integrity or oversight. He stated, “People are calling everything AI today, from photography apps to basic automation, but no one is talking about AI governance.”
Obadare warned that neglecting security and governance in AI architecture could lead to severe repercussions. He highlighted, “We are repeating the same mistake we made with TCP/IP, which was not built with cybersecurity in mind. We cannot afford to make that error again.”
He further emphasized that governance is not a barrier but an enabler of safe innovation: “Governance is not a brake to stop movement; it is a brake to make movement safe.” Obadare advocated for responsible innovation guided by clear ethical standards, citing international benchmarks like ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 38507, and underscoring the necessity of securing AI’s fundamental components: data, models, and infrastructure.
Reiterating these concerns, Amrich Singhal, in his presentation “Responsible AI and Nigeria: Balancing Innovation, Regulation, and Cybersecurity,” asserted, “the countries that will benefit most from AI are not necessarily those with the most powerful models, but those with the most trusted systems.”
Singhal described AI as a double-edged sword, capable of boosting national productivity while simultaneously facilitating new forms of cyber manipulation, including deepfakes, identity theft, and disinformation. He declared, “AI can clone voices, create fake personas, and even undermine democracy.
It is no longer a question of readiness, it’s a question of urgency.” While acknowledging Nigeria’s potential due to its young, tech-savvy populace and growing AI adoption in sectors like healthcare and agriculture, he critiqued existing regulatory frameworks, such as the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) and NITDA’s 2023 draft AI framework, as underdeveloped, underfunded, and poorly enforced.
Both experts called for a multi-stakeholder approach to AI governance. Obadare pointed to real-world failures like Microsoft’s racist chatbot Tay, Amazon’s gender-biased recruitment AI, and Uber’s fatal autonomous vehicle incident, framing them not as technological shortcomings but as governance failures. He also referenced cybersecurity breaches, including the 2023 hacking of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the leak of DeepSeek’s API keys and user data on launch day, to underscore that “the danger is not just in the algorithms, but in how we design and deploy them.”
Singhal proposed a three-pronged strategy for building Nigeria’s AI resilience: Government must champion AI education, establish safe innovation sandboxes, and enforce data laws. Private companies must adopt ethical and secure design practices while civil society must raise awareness about digital rights and AI risks, especially for vulnerable populations.
Obadare urged that governance must be embedded by design, cautioning that irresponsible innovation has already proven costly. He called on both developers and policymakers to act swiftly to ensure Nigeria’s AI future is an asset, not a liability.
Singhal also concluded stating, “AI is already here. The question is not whether to use it, but how. Nigeria must choose whether AI will be a great equalizer or its greatest vulnerability.”