Criminal Liability of Robots in Nigeria

Robots are programmable machines that are able to carry out series of actions autonomously or in a partially autonomous way. They can perform the task of human beings. Robots are not human beings because they lack human respiratory and reproductive organs, and as such depend on external source to sustain themselves; nonetheless, they are closely associated with humans. It has been argued that robots should be clothe with legal personhood, capable of rights, duties, responsibilities and liabilities. Such arguments are predicated on the task or performance capacity of the robots as distinct from the humanity and natural independent decision-making capacity of the robots. This paper notes that robots are not human beings, but agents of a human enterprise. Furthermore, the concept of mens rea cannot be ascribe to a robot even as robots lack the feeling of pains or effect of denial of liberty to appreciate the concept of punishment in criminal proceedings. In addition, there is no specific legislation in Nigeria under which a robot could be held liable for criminal offence. Nonetheless, there are provisions of Nigeria law for holding the manufacturers, programmers, operators and owners of robots liable for the criminal conducts of the robots.