A Professor of Labour Economics and Human Resource Management at the University of Lagos, UNILAG Professor Olukemi Iyabode Lawanson, has urged the government at all levels to formulate and implement policies that promote the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Nigeria’s educational, industrial, and political sectors.
She made this call while delivering the seventh inaugural lecture of the 2024/2025 academic session at the J.F. Ade Ajayi Auditorium, UNILAG, Akoka, on Wednesday, February 19, 2025.
The lecture, titled “To Everything There is a Season…”: The Perspective of a Labor Economist, highlighted the growing impact of AI on various professions and the urgent need for regulatory frameworks to manage its influence.
Professor Lawanson emphasized the importance of repositioning educational institutions—from elementary to tertiary levels—to effectively integrate automation and AI-related innovations.
She underscored the disruptive nature of AI, noting its increasing presence in banking, financial services, healthcare, retail, telecommunications, security, and the automotive industries. She further referenced a report by the World Economic Forum, which identified AI engineers and machine learning specialists as some of the most sought-after professionals globally.
Tracing the evolution of Human Resource Management and its connection to Personnel Management, the labor economist examined how AI has transformed the workplace and is shaping the future of HR. She listed several professions at risk of being overrun by AI, including customer service representatives, receptionists, accountants, warehouse workers, research analysts, and bookkeepers.
Conversely, she pointed out that fields such as human resource management, teaching, law, sports, creative arts, politics, and healthcare would likely remain largely unaffected by AI advancements.
To mitigate AI’s potential negative effects and maximize its benefits, Professor Lawanson advocated for the inclusion of AI-focused courses in school curricula. She suggested that Nigerian educational institutions introduce subjects such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics, Data Science, AI Ethics, and Generative AI to equip students with the skills needed for the future workforce.
Furthermore, she emphasized the importance of workplace AI skills such as IT project management, generative AI modeling, emotional intelligence, and model tuning. These, she argued, would help prepare both new graduates and existing professionals for the evolving job market.
As part of a roadmap for Nigeria’s AI-driven future, Professor Lawanson recommended several government interventions, including establishing a comprehensive AI policy for education, providing research grants, investing in AI infrastructure, promoting AI skills development, and enforcing ethical AI governance.
She also encouraged academic institutions to leverage AI for administrative tasks, use AI-powered adaptive learning platforms for personalized student engagement, and develop tools that foster critical thinking and social-emotional learning.
Professor Lawanson, a distinguished UNILAG alumna, holds B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Economics. Since joining the university as an Assistant Lecturer, she has risen through the ranks to become a Professor of Labour Economics and Human Resource Management in 2019.
With over 38 scholarly publications, her research spans areas such as poverty, employment, human capital development, education, and gender studies. In addition to her academic achievements, Professor Lawanson is a family-oriented individual, blessed with children and grandchildren. Her contributions to academia and policy discourse continue to shape conversations on the future of work in Nigeria.
