This paper will consider a novel area yet introduced or judiciously effected in of Nigeria. Soothingly, it’s about the future of law in Nigeria in the ushering of the fourth industrial revolution of the world, the gradual shift from human intelligence to artificial intelligence. The discourse will be narrowed to autonomous vehicles. Issues such as the bearer of liabilities in the event of an automobile accident, which falls under fatal or non-fatal incidents, will be duly addressed. The paper is a primary focus of tort law and criminal law. It analyses the loops in the various provisions from the paucity of laws on this subject matter. The realistic approach will see that autonomous vehicles are just not expedient. The world viewpoint will be to embrace growth, but realists may feel the Nigerian government is not ready for such a leap. Considered succinctly is the rigid definition of a person: the activist approach was administered.

In the world of man, there is just one culture that is constant, change. This culture of man has made itself evident with ease in various aspects of human life and existence like religion, trade, entertainment and even transportation, among many others. With respect to this exposition, focus will be beamed on the transportation sector of human life.

Transportation refers to the act or process of moving people or things from one place to another. Prior to the advent of technology, especially during the Stone Age, the predominant means of transportation was by foot. But man being a creature with high intelligence, he soon evolved better means of transportation. This evolution like a life cycle developed from the traditional use of foot to the use of horses and beasts of burden like camels, to stage-chariots, to the use of bicycles, up to the generation of automobiles whose source of power is petroleum products, up to the stage of manual and automatic cars. These were not enough. Man still evolved electric cars and, currently, there is the existence of Autonomous Vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles refer to the generation of vehicles that have the capacity to drive themselves. They are programmed with the capacity to drive themselves with the aid of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is an aspect of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence. In essence, it refers to the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behaviours and act like humans. It has, in recent years, taken shape in different spheres, but this article will sit on artificial intelligence as regards automobiles.

First, we consider the basic features of an automobile: We have the self-propelled and network reliance. By self-propelled, it means that an autonomous vehicle has the capacity to move on its own and drive itself without human assistance. In other words, it is an independent car that is driverless. The second feature is network reliance. This means that an autonomous vehicle relies heavily on network to drive. It makes use of network frequencies and signals during operation. Bearing in mind that the car can be driverless, it uses network as a sense organ for perception. For further clarity and appreciation, the cameras that come with an autonomous vehicle are the eyes while network is the nose for perceiving things. It uses things like Google maps to navigate routes.

Big Pointers

Upon painstaking attempts at studying these sophisticated machines, the issue remains: Do you think it can survive in a clime like Nigeria? If the answer is chorused in the negative, the suppositions may be right as the possible challenges of this machine in Nigeria is analysed. The basic challenges that an autonomous vehicle may face in Nigeria include but are not limited to the following: Network Access, Traffic Laws Compliance and Pedestrians.

Starting from network access, it may be a contested claim that after Nigeria's economy, the next unstable thing is network. While it may be a matter of hyperbole, it is not a prevarication to uphold the existence of the bottleneck. Currently, in Nigeria, there is an absence of network for calls in most rural areas and inadequate service in the urban areas. God forbid that an autonomous vehicle uses GLO, MTN or even Airtel network to operate in a place like Lagos or Benin. Imagine an autonomous vehicle carrying you as a passenger loses network connection at third mainland bridge, you already know your fate. So, it is better left unimagined.

The next possible challenge is traffic law compliance by Nigerians. A typical Lagos or Benin commercial bus driver has no business with traffic laws and lights. In fact, the most rugged driver gets the way. So, if these vehicles get to Nigeria, the truth is that in traffic jams, it will either not move because of the rugged drives from other drivers or just become rugged as well and when this happens, our medical doctors will have more than enough work to do.

Pedestrians may also constitute a big challenge for autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately, pedestrians barely use zebra crossing or pedestrian bridges. Remember that an autonomous vehicle works with network. So, if a pedestrian who has no phone or anything that works with network on him is crossing the road wrongly, the autonomous vehicle moving at a high speed which is not programmed to identifying human beings but to interact with networks, an accident is almost inevitable. Interestingly, there is no statutory framework for an autonomous vehicle in Nigeria, ranging from registration, licensing, protection and liability. Imagine that an autonomous vehicle that is supposed to drive from BDPA in Benin to GRA in Benin hits another car at Uselu in Benin: who bears the cost of the damage caused and why? What if the car kills someone while going to GRA, what happens? All these thoughts bring us to an integral part of this essay: The liability for an autonomous vehicle which has been divided into two - civil liability and criminal liability.

Liability refers to the state of being legally responsible for something. For the purposes of this discourse, civil liability has been divided into three as it concerns autonomous vehicles, namely: vicarious liability, third party insurance and negligence or product liability.

Vicarious liability also known as respondeat superior makes a master liable or responsible for harm which his servant has done within the course of his employment without regard to the master’s authorisation or ratification. This principle of law has grown to become an integral part of Nigeria’s jurisprudence, as tcourts have judicially applied it in a plethora of cases, such as Nduka v Ezenwaku, Ifeanyichukwu Osondu v Soleh Boneh Nigeria Limited where the court wittingly pointed out certain ingredients for vicarious liability. First, vicarious liability of the master arises only on the primary liability of the servant. Can an autonomous vehicle be regarded as a servant to the owner? According to the court in the case of NIIA v Anyafulu (2007) 2 NWLR (pt. 247) 265, a servant is a person subject to the command of his master as to the manner in which he shall do his work, and the master is liable for his acts, neglects and defaults to the extent to be specified.

Bearing this definition in mind, can an autonomous vehicle be deemed a servant of the owner? Obviously yes, because it receives instructions on where to go, how to get there and the routes to follow. Another ingredient of vicarious liability is that the liability of the servant must be during the course of employment as held in the case of Inyere v Bendel flour Mills. With respect to autonomous vehicles, the course of employment covers just the spheres of time and space. This illustration explains it: An owner of an autonomous vehicle directs it to GRA in Benin from BDPA; the expected time is a maximum of one hour. But five hours later, the autonomous car is reported to have hit something at Ore, Ondo State. This is obviously not within the time and space which automatically exculpates the owner of the car from liability, unlike when the car hits something at Uselu. The owner will be liable in the second instance because Uselu is a route to GRA from BDPA, unlike Ore.

The next realm of civil liability is the motor vehicle third party insurance. According to Section 3(1) of the Motor vehicle Third Party Insurance Act: “Subject to the provisions of this act, no person shall use a motor vehicle or cause or permit any other person to use a motor vehicle unless there is in force in relation to the user of that motor vehicle by such person or such other person as the case may be, such a policy of insurance or such a security in respect of third party risks as complies with the provisions of this act.” What this section postulates is that before a vehicle owner gives another person the permission to drive his car, he must have an insurance cover for the risk that may be caused by the third party. So, does this mean that a person who instructs a machine to drive itself is liable under this section? In law, persons are basically divided into two, natural persons and corporate entities like companies. Does an autonomous vehicle fall into any of this category of persons? Section 11 (4) (b) of the Motor Vehicle Third Party Insurance Act provides that “if the liability of the insurer to the insured is less than the liability of the insured to the third party, nothing in this act shall affect the rights of the third party against the insured in respect of the balance.” This section is to the effect that even if a car-owner makes an insurance cover but the damage caused by the third party he gave permission to drive his car is more than the cover, the victim is still entitled to sue the owner for the balance.

The last lap of civil liability is negligence or product liability. In the locus classicus case of Donogue v Stevenson, three conditions must be satisfied for negligence. These are: There must be a duty of care, breach of such duty, and damage caused by the breach of such duty. This principle was also followed in UBA v Koya. In the earlier illustration of an autonomous car hitting someone at Ore, the owner was not liable under vicarious liability. So, who bears the responsibility? The liability will be borne by the manufacturer under the sphere of product liability. This makes a manufacturer responsible for any wrong or fault in his product. So, the manufacturer will have to show that he did everything reasonable at the point of manufacture and production to preclude such accidents.

At this point, the criminal liability for an autonomous vehicle will be subjected to a litmus paper test. Since 2014, there have been over 30 accidents involving autonomous vehicles in the state of California. In March 2018, an autonomous vehicle or a self-driving Uber car struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. It should be noted that in the United States of America where these accidents happened, there are laws on autonomous vehicles. The question is: What if the killing of March 2018 happened in Nigeria, will the victim just die like that because there is no law on autonomous vehicles in Nigeria? What happens next? As a take-off point, Section 36 (12) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) as amended provides, inter alia, that no person should be punished for any crime not in any written law in Nigeria. So, will the owner of the vehicle go free because there is no law that mentions autonomous vehicles? Obviously not. A mental trip to Section 317 of the Criminal Code provides that any person who causes the killing of another in a way that does not constitute murder is guilty of manslaughter. It is, therefore, safe to pin the owner of an autonomous vehicle down with manslaughter because he set the object of harm in motion.

This analogy explains it: Mr A, a worker with the waste management agency while performing his duty picks a bottle and throws it through the window; the bottle is expected to land in a dust-bin but unknown to Mr A, there is a little boy close to the waste-bin and the bottle accidentally hits and kills the child. Mr A will be liable for manslaughter in this circumstance because the killing was not intended. So, the owner of an autonomous vehicle sets it in motion by giving it instruction exactly the way Mr A sets the bottle in motion. Hence, the owner of the autonomous car will be guilty of manslaughter.

The next question is the legality of an autonomous vehicle driving itself in Nigeria. First, before a person can drive in Nigeria, the person must have a driver’s license. This is ventilated properly by Section 10 of the Federal Highways Act (1971) and Section 23 (1) of the Federal Road Safety Commission (establishment) Act, 2007. Can an autonomous vehicle obtain a driver’s license? It is an undisturbed principle of law that one can only be punished for the breach of the law and for nothing else. So, going by the fact that there is no law restricting the use of an autonomous vehicle in Nigeria, it is not illegal for it to enjoy Nigerian roads. Even our laws have neither empowered nor stopped appropriate agencies from licensing autonomous vehicles. At this point, this writer deems it necessary to make some recommendations on autonomous vehicles. First, it is imperative to define a driver beyond the scope of human persons in our laws. Provision of licence for autonomous vehicle and minimum standard for issuance, enactment of an act to regulate autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence as a whole, creation of a distinct and sole network access for autonomous vehicles, autonomous vehicles in Nigeria should be programmed to park safely, once access to network is unavailable or poor.

Conclusion

Considering the state of infrastructure in Nigeria, it is imperative to note that Nigeria is not ready to receive autonomous vehicles, given that our network connections are poor. The absence of law in this area creates so much uncertainty as to licence and liability. Either way, Rome was not built in a day. Importantly as well, Rome was not built forever without progress. It is time to act. This is a call for the government to recognise and tailor feasible channels to receive or set in motion this level of sophistication. It may take years to appreciate this, especially as we must consider the albatross on our padded shoulders.

“Do we set the legislation for imported automobiles at the expense of our gross domestic product? Is it wholly reasonable to think in this direction of sophisticated automobile car-making when we have not prided our country in the skill set of making even the regulars?”

This is food for thought, but the answer is certain. Government directives in this direction are big sources of revenue. Slipshoddiness is the bane in Nigeria, indeed.

•Lawrence C Egwu is a 400 level Law student at the University of Benin.

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