Nigeria’s rapid embrace of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is positioning the country as one of the world’s most enthusiastic AI adopters, but without strategic leadership, governance, and behavioural alignment, that momentum could turn into a long-term national liability, according to David Adeoye Abodunrin, futurist and AI governance expert.
Speaking at an exclusive media dialogue in Lagos, Abodunrin warned that Nigeria’s AI challenge is no longer about access to tools or digital curiosity.
Instead, he said, the country risks sliding into a cycle of fragmented adoption, ethical exposure, and foreign dependence if leaders fail to move from merely deploying AI products to deliberately designing intelligence systems aligned with national interests and African values.
Research cited at the session shows that more than nine in ten Nigerians already use AI tools to learn, work, and explore business ideas. While this places Nigeria at the forefront of global AI adoption, Abodunrin argued that high usage without a coordinated strategy creates a dangerous illusion of progress.
In his words, enthusiasm without architecture leads to duplicated investments, conflicting standards, and missed opportunities for collective advancement.
He stressed that the most persistent myth around AI transformation in Africa is that it is a technology problem. He said the real barrier lies in leadership behaviour, organisational culture, and incentive systems that reward caution, hierarchy, and short-term results over experimentation, trust-building, and long-range intelligence design.
Globally, more than 70 percent of transformation initiatives fail, not because the technology is wrong, but because people resist poorly designed change that threatens competence, status, or autonomy.
According to Abodunrin, AI does not fix weak systems; it amplifies them. In institutions with fragile governance, AI can scale bias, deepen inequality, and magnify fear, while quietly failing through shadow adoption and cultural sabotage.
He noted that, many AI projects appear successful on the surface, launched, funded, and reported, yet deliver little real value because trust was never established and behaviour never truly changed.
The dialogue also highlighted a fundamental shift in leadership power in the intelligence age. Traditional authority based on position and control is giving way to what Abodunrin described as cognitive leadership, the ability to shape attention, incentives, and decision environments at scale.
“Leaders must now design systems that help people make better decisions without constant supervision, a skillset rooted as much in behavioural science and psychology as in technology,” he explained.
Ethics and digital sovereignty were presented not as moral afterthoughts but as strategic imperatives. Abodunrin argued that nations that outsource their intelligence architecture surrender long-term autonomy, regardless of short-term efficiency gains.
He challenged African leaders to see ethical AI as a competitive advantage and to ground governance frameworks in African philosophies that prioritise communal wellbeing, dignity, and shared prosperity.
Despite the risks, the session struck an optimistic note about Africa’s potential. With the world’s youngest population, high adaptability, and fewer legacy systems, the continent is well positioned to leapfrog older models, if leadership maturity can keep pace with accelerating AI capabilities. The real question, Abodunrin concluded, is not whether Africa will use AI, but whether it will design intelligence or remain dependent on systems built for other realities.
As AI advances faster than leadership understanding, he warned, the window for strategic positioning is narrowing. The future, he said, will belong not to those with the most powerful machines, but to those who understand humans well enough to design intelligence that amplifies, rather than erodes, African agency.
