CJID AI and Tech Reporting fellow
“And guide us when perplexed…”. Those are the words of the sixth line of the second stanza of Martin Rinkart’s (1636) hymn, ‘Now Thank We All Our God’.
Rinkart’s prayerful 17th century hymn appears a perfect reflection of how the 21st century university community in Nigeria feels about the intrusion of Artificial Intelligence into teaching, training, research, and the learning environment.
No clear policy direction.
“When universities are not developing the policy, how do we expect the government in Nigeria to have a national policy on AI whereas some countries have developed theirs?” Olugbenga Abimbola, a senior lecturer at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko asked during an interview, drawing inference to the bigger implications of how universities should influence national policy.
In the absence of any policy direction at the University of Ibadan, individual academic units are currently in charge of determining what policy to adopt, according to Yinka Oyewo, professor and immediate past Head, Department of Communication and Language Arts.
Professors from other universities consulted for this story affirmed what Oyewo said.
With no clear direction, students are on a roller coaster, using AI to write flawless assignments and projects. Some get punished for it; some get enlightened by their lecturers on how to go about using it.
Jennifer Daniel, 200 level Mass Communication student at Caleb University wants open communication on the use of AI, and not blanket condemnation by lecturers. “I do not support using AI because it makes you lose your ability to think,and that is why I always feel insulted and sad each time a lecturer looks at something I did with all my efforts and concludes, just because it is good, that it was done by AI. We need to know what to do.”
Improvement in Nigeria’s readiness to embrace AI.
Nigeria has moved from 103 to 94 position between 2023 and 2024 on the Oxford Government AI Readiness Ranking, indicating that the country is on a positive path for AI adoption and use, a major objective of the AI Collective which envisions a future where Nigeria harnesses the power of AI to drive economic prosperity, innovation, and social development, positioning itself as a leading force in AI for good on the African continent and globally. In 2024 the AI Collective, a group of national sectoral stakeholders on AI in Nigeria, produced a draft national strategy document that is undergoing review.
But while the nation waits for the policy to become official, lecturers and students continue to grapple with the dilemma of AI use on their campuses. Professor Uwaoma Uche, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Administration, at Gregory University, Uturu in Abia state said his university recently banned any student from coming to exam halls with any facility, “including their mobile phones that could be used to generate answers that come from AI”, after some were caught earlier.
“The reality is that students of today don’t want to read; they just want something that can give them quick answers”, Mrs. Nurat Tosin Yusuf-Audu, a script writing lecturer at University of Abuja said, explaining that though she uses AI for her work, unlike students who ‘don’t have their own original ideas’ but ‘are somewhere drinking tea or listening to music and just want the machine to do the whole work for them’, she has upgraded herself to the stage of “knowing what I want from it before pushing it into the machine”.
But Adebayo Ademide believes AI use is very beneficial to students. “I often ask AI to break down concepts for me as if it were teaching a child; which is what a lecturer might not be able to do because of several factors”.
Esther Oluwapelumi Onye supports training students on AI use. She believes lecturers often ‘shout’ against using AI because they want to hide something useful from the students.
“I don’t think it is right to detest using AI. Although I also understand the point of view of lecturers that over- dependence on it will reduce reading culture, I think if lecturers project its usefulness more it will be good for us. I feel like students are using it because of the way lecturers are shouting against it as it gives the impression that there is something they are hiding from the students.”
Victor-Wise Ozi-Yusuf, studying History and International Relations at the University of Ilorin, traced the challenge to ‘generational differences. “If you check, you will see that most of our lecturers are in their 50s or older, while the students are much younger. The students understand these things more than the lecturers and so currently they are using it and where you have a lecturer who is not familiar with the tech, the students easily get away with it”.
The generational challenge raised by Victor-Wise, is a matter of concern for Professor Samuel Ekundayo Oladipo, Director of Research and International Relations at the Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Ijagun in Ogun state, who agreed there is a seeming reluctance by some faculty to embrace the use of AI.
“From my experience, the adoption rate among social sciences is even more challenging than in other disciplines because there are some faculty there who still frown at the use of AI. They are not willing to step down at all. But whether we like it or not, that is where we are going. It is both good and bad.”
Oladipo, who has undergone training in the use of AI, expressed concern over the apparent challenges in implementing policy directions on it in universities in Nigeria. University management, he pointed out, must take it up as a critical input. He is currently engaged in sensitizing faculty and students on the use of AI in his school.
“We just started something on it. Some of my colleagues, even I went through a training conducted by Professor Okebukola and the focus after the training is for us to come up with a policy which we are still working on. “But at the individual level we are still trying to sensitise our staff and students to its use although there are some staff who seem not to see a need for it.”
The training was conducted by Virtual Institute for Capacity Building in Higher Education (VICBHE), a joint effort between the National Universities Commission (NUC) and National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). Dr Sekinat Kola-Aderoju, Director of Academic Planning at Koladaisi University, Ibadan, also attended the training and now heads a committee at her university that she said is ‘on the final draft’ of a policy document for the school.
Having keyed into the use of AI, Oladipo is ready to be a guide to colleagues and students as he narrates his personal successes on the subject, much like Esther and Victor-Wise canvased..
“If we can be properly guided, we will be able to use it appropriately. Let me give you an instance; last night I was reading materials from a group that I subscribe to on AI and I heard them speaking of an AI. Meanwhile I was developing materials for a training for staff on google forms administration, power points design and use etc. as I inserted the prompt into the AI they spoke about, it generated everything I needed, including scripts and slides and illustration etc. everything. What was left for me was to review it for appropriateness. Meanwhile, if I were to develop the material manually, I would be spending days doing it.
“For me, I am not averse to this innovation; it makes my work lighter. Last semester, I conducted an online course and everything we did was made easy with the use of AI. So, I don’t see it as bad.”
But there is a need to move towards coordinated guidance of both faculty and students. At the University of Ibadan, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), Professor Aderonke Baiyeroju, while responding to an interview request,acknowledged that although the school does not have a policy yet, there are talks among lecturers about it.
A coordinated approach will help faculty like Abimbola who is worried he still hasn’t gotten much out of using AI as desired. “I cannot say I have really utilised 0.1 percent of AI because most of my work, it still doesn’t easily come to my mind when I have anything to write, to consult AI, no”.
“The best I have been doing is consulting search engines, and that is why I said I am still learning because I know that if I have full grasp of using AI, it will help me. But I feel limited as of now and I cannot say I am AI literate as an academic.”
We Are Not Afraid Of AI….
Many of the lecturers expressed confidence they could cope with AI use if properly guided, as Oladipo canvassed.
Just like Uche and Oladipo, Abimbola argued that AI cannot replace lecturers.
Whenever Mrs. Yusuf-Audu, receives an assignment from her script writing students which she believes has been written completely by AI, her response is to either turn it down, or score as zero.
“My students don’t like me for this”, she giggled over the line during a telephone interview as she lamented the situation.
But some students also accuse their lecturers of using AI while denying them the opportunity. “When we are told not to use AI, they make us feel like using it is committing a sin”, Esther, a final year student with a research project focusing on adoption of AI in the newsroom said. Tanidabioluwa Awofeso thinks lecturers who are against AI use take such a stand out of frustration. “In their days there was nothing like AI to help them and now seeing their students being able to use it and get things done more easily makes some of them unhappy”.
The development has brought into the open the absence of accountability procedure and processes in the use of AI in tertiary institutions.
“Students, especially those in computer science are beginning to use AI as a means of acquiring knowledge and that in itself is a happy development”, according Anthony Akinwale, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Augustine University, Ilara Epe, Lagos State.
A Dominican Friar, Professor of systematic theology and thomistic philosophy, Akinwale said the “other side of the story” which is the requirement of intellectual honesty, “calls for an ethically regulated framework…that AI is not used in a manner that transgresses the boundary of ethics”
Nigeria is not alone in the perplexity. Many schools in the United States of America are running back to the old days of pen and paper exams by resuscitating the old Blue Book. The Wall Street Journal described the resolution as a ‘painfully-old school’ solution. Fox News defined it as a measure to defend academic honesty in the age of ChatGPT.
“I believe instead it will add value to us rather than diminish us. It is when we are passive in using it that it will create problems for us,” Abimbola said.
He recommended two policy thrusts to guide AI use in universities:
“For me, AI use in academics is in two aspects: data and literature. For literature I will propose that we have a policy that will enable us to use AI to edit our works, to proofread and maybe straighten our work but not to the extent of asking AI to generate content. So, let’s have a policy that will discourage people from using AI to generate literature or academic content. But for the use of data and editing I will support that.”
“AI has not come to take my job”, Professor Uche noted, adding: “We must demystify the concept of AI. It has been with us for a long time. Let us understand that it cannot operate without an enablement by a human. AI can only displace lazy lecturers who are not progressive in their knowledge”.
How we are coping with students’ use of AI
Olaidpo, a Professor of Applied Psychology, pointed to the psychological relief that some students get from access to AI and wants lecturers to provide guidance, not condemnation.
“Students are better at using it compared to staff. What I do is, I tell my students to use it wisely. I teach them, I guide them and some of them would later come and tell me they have been helped by what I did with them. When you let them know that you know more than they do, and you are not preventing them from using it but rather guiding them, they are freer.
“Now, they will always revise whatever they have copied so that when I ask them questions, they can answer properly.
“Some of them are self- sponsored, they go out to hustle and now they see AI as an easy route to studying and success but not knowing if they fail to review what it gives them is nonsense.”
Dr Omolayo Omorinoye, Senior Lecturer in Geology and Mining Science at the University of Ilorin, agreed students should be guided right. “I encourage my students to consult textbooks and journals first and use AI to harness their findings”, she said.
An example to follow
But it is not only in Nigeria that this challenge exists. Citing several studies conducted between 2024-2025, Campbel Academic Technology Services observed that “Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the landscape of higher education, impacting how students learn, how faculty teach, and how institutions operate”
A global survey by the Digital Education Council, according to the Academy, found that 86% of students use AI in their studies, with 54% using it weekly and nearly one in four using it daily, a survey of 1,041 full-time undergraduate students in the UK by HEPI and Kortext found that 92% of students were using AI tools in their studies.
Israel has taken a strategic leap, led by Roy Levi, the mayor of Nasher, in AI adoption in schools. In an article for The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-859752, Levi explained how, more than two years back, the city of Nasher “made a groundbreaking strategic decision: to integrate artificial intelligence education across all levels of our local school system, from early childhood through to high school.”
It has many advantages, according to Levi. “AI allows teachers to move beyond repetitive technical tasks like grading exams or writing reports and focus on what truly matters: the human connection with their students. It enables a student to learn about Bialik through music, film, or personal stories, and not just by reading a poem from a textbook..”
A Stakeholders Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence, the Media and Press Freedom, convened jointly by the International Press Centre (IPC) and Association of Communication Scholars& Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN) in May 2025 in Lagos recommended this approach, too. It urged “universities and journalism training institutions to undertake a comprehensive review and update of their curricula to reflect the evolving media landscape.”
In Hong Kong, Cecilia Ka Yuk Chan has proposed a three- dimensional policy approach, after collecting data from 457 students and 180 teachers and staff across various disciplines in Hong Kong universities. Her study, published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education proposes an AI Ecological Education Policy Framework that would confront the complex implications of AI use in university teaching and learning. Cecelia’s framework is organized into three dimensions: Pedagogical, Governance, and Operational.
According to the author, this proposal is capable of fostering “a nuanced understanding of the implications of AI integration in academic settings, ensuring that stakeholders are aware of their responsibilities and can take appropriate actions accordingly.”
Nigeria universities could pick it up from here.
*This report was produced with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) and Luminate
