The current state of Nigerian roads and its traffic system highlight a critical challenge in the country’s readiness for highly automated driving (HAD) technologies. Automated vehicles are among the key trends shaping the future of mobility, allowing self-driving cars that can navigate traffic safely, avoid hazards, and make decisions without human input.
Globally, the emergence self-driving cars has sparked debates around safety, infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks. Major automakers and tech innovators from Google’s Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox to China’s Pony.ai and Tesla’s Robotaxi are already conducting large-scale autonomous driving trials across U.S. cities, and Waymo announcing its European debut for 2026 in London, shows countries across Europe, North America, and Asia are proactively modernising their infrastructure, updating traffic laws, and aligning policies to support the era of self-driving mobility.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, we are still trying to fix potholes. Let’s not sugarcoat it: with over 200,000 kilometres of road across the country, more than 75 per cent is in poor condition. That is not just a statistic but an indictment because one of the crucial ideas shaping automated driving transition globally is the principle of generalisable autonomy, the ability of self-driving systems to function seamlessly across diverse countries, road layouts, and driving cultures without extensive retraining of their AI technology.
If we are to see autonomous vehicle pilots in Nigeria, Lagos or Abuja will be the most likely places, however, the problems are still enormous in these major cities. Uneven surfaces, unpredictable drivers, open gutters,flooding, malfunctioning traffic lights and vanishing lane markings all pose serious problems, not just for humans, but for machines that depend on patterns, predictability, and precision.
Self-driving cars don’t guess. They read. And what they read on Nigerian roads right now is, frankly, gibberish. This is why conversations about automation must go beyond tech. They must go deep into governance, infrastructure policy, and culture.
President Bola Tinubu’s Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway Project, a 700-kilometre corridor spanning nine states under the Renewed Hope Agenda demonstrates what is possible when national political will and investment converge. But this can’t be a one-road Tinubu’s legacy wonder. The real challenge lies in replicating that quality across thousands of kilometres, including the ones managed by states and local governments, many of which are underfunded, and overwhelmed.
This underscores the urgent need for a holistic reform of Nigeria’s infrastructure governance model, one that enables stronger federal support for state-controlled road assets. Strengthening this partnership is essential to ensure that roads across all regions, not only federally funded corridors can meet modern standards, foster economic growth, and eventually support the deployment of advanced mobility technologies such as highly automated vehicles.
For the sake of consistency, the Federal Ministry of Works has a published Highway Manual that outlines uniform guidelines standards for signals, road markings, and traffic signs nationwide. In fairness, it can be more thorough, notwithstanding, it is solid at least on paper. But anyone who has travelled beyond major highways knows that implementation is uneven at best, and non-existent at worst. Without consistent signage and uniform standards, even the most sophisticated onboard AI will throw up its virtual hands.
But it is not just the roads. It is the people on them too. Driving culture in Nigeria is a story in itself, a story of shortcuts, second lanes, wrong turns, and the occasional danfo doing a U-turn on the expressway. For automated driving to work, human driving also has to be predictable. That means better driver education, stricter licensing procedures, and a large scale deployment of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras for enforcement.
The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has a massive role to play. Modernising the driving curriculum and revamping testing methods would not just be a good policy but a survival prep for a future where humans and machines will share the road. Self-driving cars won’t fix Nigeria, however, preparing for them might force us to fix the things we have long ignored: our roads, our rules, and our road users.
And maybe that is the real point. Because for Nigeria, preparing for autonomous vehicles is not just about the cars but about building a society that values structure, order, forward planning and progress The global race towards automation should not leave us behind. Instead, it should serve as a mirror reflecting our gaps, yes, but also our potential. If we seize this moment, the benefits will go beyond robotaxis. We will see fewer accidents, less stress on our daily commute and ultimately, a renewed confidence in our social institutions.
