At the 49th Annual Conference of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN) recently held in Lagos, several stakeholders identified the transformative impact Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are having on governance.

Responding to comments at the conference themed “Reimagining Governance: Navigating the Artificial Intelligence Revolution for Excellence” is Olajide Olugbade, an AI governance expert with years of experience in the Nigerian corporate governance scene.

Olugbade was a governance, risk, and compliance consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Nigeria, where he advised top organizations in multiple Nigerian industries across the private and public sectors on maintaining effective corporate governance systems to comply with regulatory requirements and navigate risks, including from digital transformation.

He is a member of the Compliance Institute of Nigeria (CIN) and holds a certification in Accounting and Business by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in the United Kingdom.

Olugbade currently serves as an Ethics and Policy Specialist in a $65 million federal government-funded project in Georgia, USA, to integrate AI in Advanced Manufacturing.

In this role, he develops AI governance frameworks to assist stakeholders in the responsible deployment of AI systems. Leveraging his expertise in the domains of AI governance and corporate governance, Olugbade reflects on the ICSAN event:

“It is good to see these issues being discussed at the forum organized by ICSAN. AI adoption is important, but even more important is having the right systems in place to govern the adoption. Organizations should have effective accountability mechanisms to ensure AI adoption is done responsibly.”

Olugbade cautioned against the risk of organizations faking this in what he termed ‘ethics washing’: “I have a recent publication with two colleagues, where we observed that organizations often participate in ethics washing—publicly advertising their creation of ethics offices as a demonstration of ethical governance, particularly in the context of AI systems.

“However, these offices frequently serve a symbolic function and lack the authority or capacity to enforce responsible innovation within the organization.”

He continued, “To do it right, organizations must designate corporate governance mechanisms for AI governance with organizational power, which we specified as enabling the organization to effectively cope with uncertainty in its environment, possessing a non-substitutable role, and occupying a central position within the organization’s operations.”

Olugbade’s expertise continues to find relevance at the highest levels of AI governance, policy, and ethics with several stakeholders.

In his work at RAND Corporation, he has helped a US government agency in evaluating barriers to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities.

As a member of the United Nations Network of Experts on AI, he consulted with the AI Advisory Body of the UN Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies on global AI governance. He is also currently working as part of a policy advisory group on AI policy development in Uganda. He can be reached via [email protected].