Artificial Intelligence and Automated Decision-making under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023: Evaluating the Adequacy of Nigeria's Data Protection Framework

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the collection, processing, and utilisation of personal data across public and private sectors in Nigeria. The use of AI-driven technologies is common in every sector of the socioeconomic Nigeria society. However, AI-based data processing presents several legal issues relating to privacy, transparency, accountability, bias and automated decision making. The Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023 is an important step for the protection of personal data. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the law contains sufficient safeguards for AI-based data processing. This paper critically explores the adequacy of the NDPA in the regulation of AI-based data processing and automated decision making. The paper contends that while the law recognises key data protection principles such as lawfulness, fairness, transparency, purpose limitation, data minimisation and accountability, it does not have specific provisions on automated decision making, akin to the EU's GDPR. This paper adopts a doctrinal and comparative legal research methodology to examine the main provisions of the NDPA vis-à-vis the GDPR and other relevant international standards. The paper concludes that there is a need for legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure that the data protection regime in Nigeria keeps pace with AI developments.