When Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami took the stage at the 16th Annual General Conference of the Muslim Lawyers’ Association of Nigeria (MULAN) in Ilorin, it was clear this would be no ordinary address. Armed with a rare blend of policy expertise and an unflinching grasp of AI’s disruptive potential, Pantami laid bare the legal profession’s unpreparedness for a fast-arriving digital future. In his keynote, he not only traced the sweeping promise of AI for legal research, trial management, and client services but also painted a sobering portrait of the threats it poses to privacy, accountability, and even the very idea of culpability in law.
A Call to Confront a Legal Reckoning
Pantami’s keynote was no routine policy address. Delivered with the verve of a seasoned technocrat and the urgency of a man attuned to history’s unfolding, it sought to jolt Nigeria’s legal profession into reckoning with a rapidly advancing reality: the relentless ascent of artificial intelligence and its unsettling implications for the justice system. Drawing from his years at the intersection of technology governance and public policy, Pantami provided both an insider’s perspective on Nigeria’s fragile regulatory architecture and a sweeping reflection on global AI trajectories. But at its heart, his message was a clarion call — urging the legal community and the Nigerian state itself to confront the mounting legal and ethical dilemmas of AI with clarity, legislative precision, and the courage to act before consequences outpace laws.
AI Is Not Coming. It’s Here.
The keynote wasted no time in moving from principle to practice. It began by re-examining the age-old functions of a lawyer — adviser, draftsman, advocate, negotiator, researcher, interpreter, and case manager. Of these seven pillars, it was revealed, artificial intelligence already performs six with startling competence. In certain instances, AI platforms don’t merely assist human lawyers — they outperform them. Advanced systems such as Kira, ROSS Intelligence, and LawGeex are transforming how contracts are reviewed, opinions drafted, and case documents analyzed, achieving in minutes what once consumed teams of lawyers for days. Even the sanctity of the courtroom is no longer untouched. From virtual proceedings in Canada to AI-aided case management in South Africa, the machinery of justice is rapidly being retooled. Yet, this technological promise arrives with threats the profession can no longer afford to dismiss.
“AI is not coming. It’s here. And if we don’t proactively legislate its limits and responsibilities, we risk surrendering our justice system to an invisible force we neither control nor fully understand.”
— Dr. Isa Ali Pantami
Data Tsunamis and the End of Privacy
In what was perhaps the most arresting portion of his address, Pantami traced the staggering growth of data generation in the digital age. From the dawn of civilization to 2003, humanity produced a modest five exabytes of data. Today, he noted with a pause, the world generates 400 exabytes every single day.
“Your smartphones know you better than you know yourself,” he remarked, drawing knowing laughter from the audience — a sobering reflection masked by shared unease.
This data deluge, he argued, places Nigeria’s constitutional guarantee of privacy under unprecedented strain. While the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023, which Pantami’s team helped midwife into law, represents an important step forward, he was emphatic that it remains insufficient without complementary frameworks governing the ethical deployment and operational accountability of AI.
Crimes Without Criminals
Yet perhaps the most disquieting frontier AI presents is its capacity to sever the traditional link between crime and culpability. The keynote detailed real-world cases: a $240,000 deepfake scam in the UK’s energy sector, an AI-generated phishing attack in India, and the tragic story of a Florida teenager manipulated into suicide by an AI-powered chatbot. In each, the question of responsibility proved elusive.
Closer to home, the 2023 drone strike on Tudun Biri, Kaduna, became a chilling illustration of technological opacity and legal uncertainty. Who, the address asked, is to be held accountable — the programmer, the machine, the operator, or the state that deploys it? Without legal frameworks explicitly addressing AI’s operational chain of responsibility, Nigeria, it warned, risks sleepwalking into an era where harm is inflicted, rights are violated, and no human actor stands answerable in law.
“Your smartphones know you better than you know yourself. The sheer volume of data we generate today threatens not just privacy, but the very notion of personal autonomy.”
A Legislative Reckoning, Long Overdue
The address did not leave the audience adrift in apprehension. It made a decisive case for legislative intervention — pragmatic, anticipatory, and uncompromising. Two key enactments were proposed: a National Artificial Intelligence Development and Deployment Act, to govern the ethical creation, domestic use, and permissible bounds of AI within Nigeria; and a National Artificial Intelligence Accountability and Liability Act, to establish clear chains of responsibility for AI-related harms, ensuring that neither machine nor human actor escapes legal scrutiny. More than mere policy recommendations, these were positioned as existential safeguards for national sovereignty, civil liberties, and the integrity of justice itself. The legal profession, long the conscience of the republic, was challenged to reclaim its role not only as an interpreter of statutes but as an architect of the moral and legal order in an increasingly algorithmic age.
Between Promise and Peril
The address concluded on a cautionary note, evoking the forewarnings of thinkers like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, both of whom have spoken of AI’s capacity to imperil human civilization if left unchecked. Yet beyond these grand dystopian visions, the speaker sounded a quieter, more immediate alarm — the creeping risk of intellectual atrophy. “If you depend so much on AI,” he observed, “you will discover that even your intellectual capacity is broken.” For a profession founded on the rigours of reasoning, interpretation, and advocacy, it was a sobering indictment. The unspoken question lingered: would lawyers embrace the conveniences of automation at the cost of the very faculties that define their craft?
A Call to the Custodians of Justice
This was no routine technocratic sermon. It was a direct challenge to Nigeria’s legal community to reclaim its place as both the custodian of rights and the architect of public morality. The justice system, long reliant on human deliberation, faces a moment of reckoning as AI systems increasingly mediate everything from legal research to trial management. AI is not a neutral tool; it is an instrument capable of either emancipation or oppression, depending on who sets the rules and to what end. The burden now rests with the legal profession — stewards of law and justice — to shape those rules with foresight and moral courage before events overtake them.
