AI and Evidence in Nigerian Courts: Can You Still Believe What You See and Hear?

A courtroom is, at its core, a place where a story is tested against proof. For most of legal history, the proof spoke for itself. A document was a document. A photograph was a photograph. A recording was a recording. Artificial intelligence has quietly dissolved that certainty. A Judge in Lagos or Abuja can now be handed a video, an audio clip or a document that looks entirely authentic and is, in fact, a fabrication produced by a machine. This article examines whether the Evidence Act 2011, as amended in 2023, is equipped to handle that possibility. It traces the statutory journey from the Supreme Court's early recognition of computer-generated records in Esso West Africa Inc v Oyegbola, through section 84 of the Evidence Act, to the newer sections 84A to 84D introduced by the Evidence (Amendment) Act 2023. It then tests that framework against the specific problem of AI-manipulated audio, images, video and documents, and considers the role of expert evidence, the shifting burden of proof, and the particular dangers this problem poses in electoral litigation. The article concludes that Nigeria's evidential architecture, though genuinely progressive for its time, was not built to answer the one question that now matters most: not whether a record was properly kept, but whether the reality it claims to show ever happened at all.

Artificial intelligence; Evidence; Deepfakes; Admissibility; Authentication; Nigeria

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