LEGAL LIABILITY FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-AGGRAVATED CYBERCRIMES IN NIGERIA: A SOCIO-LEGAL AND RELIGIOUS CRITIQUE

Abstract

The deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the commission of cybercrimes in Nigeria has generated a novel and largely unresolved question: who bears legal liability when a crime is executed, concealed, or amplified through an autonomous or semi-autonomous system? This paper critically examines the adequacy of Nigeria's liability framework, principally anchored on the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 (as amended in 2024), the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, and general principles of criminal and tortious liability, in attributing culpability across the chain of AI developers, deployers, and end-users implicated in AI-aggravated offences. It argues that Nigeria's liability regime, built on human-centred doctrines of mens rea, intention, and direct causation, struggles to accommodate the diffused, multi-actor, and semi-autonomous nature of AI-facilitated crime, producing what the paper terms an "accountability gap." The paper further advances a religious critique, contending that Islamic and Christian conceptions of moral responsibility (taklīf and stewardship, respectively) offer conceptual resources for closing this gap by emphasising the non-delegability of moral and legal accountability, irrespective of the technological instrumentality used. The paper concludes by proposing a tiered liability model, comprising developer liability for foreseeable design defects, deployer liability for negligent deployment, and user liability for malicious use, reinforced by religious-ethical accountability discourse as a complementary normative layer.