Every month Nigeria spends without a finished AI law is a month a Lagos fintech ships a credit-scoring model with zero legal guardrails, a Kano hospital experiments with diagnostic AI with no liability framework, and a foreign investor quietly moves a data center decision to Kenya or Rwanda instead. That’s the current state of play, and it’s been the state of play since 2021.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Major Highlights
- Nigeria’s AI legislation history: an AI and Robotics Research Regulatory Agency Bill (2021), a National AI and Robotics Sciences Bill (2023), a Control of Usage of AI Technology Bill (2023), and a National AI Regulatory Authority Bill (2024) were all eventually merged.
- The current front-runner is the National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill, first introduced in July 2024, and the first bill to be presented to stakeholders across all 36 states and the FCT.
- Communications Minister Bosun Tijani has said President Tinubu will sign it as soon as the National Assembly passes it, but the bill remains awaiting final assent.
- Lawmakers targeted passage by end of March 2026; that deadline slipped, then slipped again to Q2 2026.
- The bill would give NITDA formal authority over algorithms and data governance, introduce mandatory annual audits for AI in finance, public administration, and surveillance, and require licensing or registration before deploying AI systems in Nigeria.
- Meanwhile, Egypt, Benin, and Mauritius have already published national AI strategies, and Nigeria’s digital economy is projected to generate $18.3 billion in revenue this year.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KINI BIG DEAL
The uncomfortable truth in this story is that Nigeria’s problem isn’t drafting, it’s signing. The consultation process has genuinely been thorough (all 36 states plus FCT is not a small feat), the political will is real, and the substance of the bill, risk classification, audit requirements, regulatory sandboxes, is internationally comparable. What’s missing is simply the final signature, and that delay comes with a cost.
Every serious investor doing due diligence on a Nigerian AI startup right now has to write ‘regulatory uncertainty’ into the risk section of their memo. That’s not abstract, that’s slower funding rounds, more cautious partnerships, and multinational tech firms treating Nigeria as wait-and-see rather than a priority market. And it’s compounding: smaller economies like Mauritius and Benin having published AI strategies means Nigeria, Africa’s largest digital market, risks watching countries a fraction of its size define the continental rulebook it will eventually have to follow anyway.
There’s a lesson here for how Nigeria talks about AI leadership generally. NITDA’s own Director-General has said the country wants to be proactive, not reactive, about AI. But proactivity requires a passed law, not a perpetually pending one. Nigeria doesn’t need a perfect AI law right now. E need one wey don pass. The strategy documents, the hearings, the ministerial assurances, all of that is intent, but not infrastructure.
