Why Most AI Strategies in Nigerian Companies Fail Before They Start

I have sat in enough boardrooms in Lagos and Abuja to recognise the pattern within minutes. Somebody senior comes back from a conference. A budget appears, then a committee, then a vendor demo. Six months later almost nothing has changed. The outcome is predictable, and so is the mistake behind it. ## The wrong first question Most Nigerian companies start by asking what AI tools are available. The ones that get it right ask something else. What are the most expensive problems in this business right now? Start with the tools and you end up bending the business around the technology. Start with the problem and the technology has to earn its place. ## Three ways I see it go wrong Handing AI to IT. When the CTO owns the AI strategy alone, it gets scoped and judged as a technology rollout. Success means the system runs. Whether the business changed never gets asked. AI is a business change that happens to involve technology. Pilots with no road to scale. Most pilots are designed to prove the idea works, and very few prove the business case. They sit to one side of the real workflow, so when they end there is nothing meaningful to scale. Ignoring the people. I have watched companies roll out AI tools their teams then quietly declined to use. Nobody had explained what the tools were for, why things were changing, or what it meant for anybody's job. ## What getting it right looks like The companies making real progress have a specific problem they are solving. Their executive sponsor is visible and involved, well beyond a name on a slide. And they have found the people already experimenting with AI inside the business. What is the single most expensive inefficiency in your business, and what exactly would solving it be worth? If you can answer that clearly, you have the foundation of a real AI strategy. If you cannot, any money you spend on AI right now is early. --- ## Working Together If this is close to where your business is right now, I would like to hear about it. I work with a small number of clients at a time and I read every message myself. Email [me@martins.com.ng](mailto:me@martins.com.ng), read [how I work](/work-with-me), or connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanmartins).