Expert: Nigerian Banks Need AI-native AML, Not Automated AML

Director of Innovation & Technology, Datalink Consulting Limited, Dr. Osagie Kingsley Omoruyi, has explained why Nigerian banks need AI-native Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and not just automated AML.

He said this in a statement, while explaining what the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) new deadlines actually require banks to build to address the issue of money laundering.

He said when the Central Bank of Nigeria sets firm deadlines for banks to move from manual, batch-based anti-money laundering controls to fully automated, real-time systems, it wasn’t just issuing another circular. It was closing an era.

He added that for several years Nigerian banks have treated AML as clean-up after the fact: a nightly batch job, a queue that never gets shorter. That’s no longer good enough.

“You don’t have to look far for proof. Earlier this month, a Federal High Court in Lagos ordered 71 banks and fintechs to freeze accounts allegedly holding part of the N1.34 billion that Access Bank says was moved out of customer accounts without authorisation through its SME app. The case is still before the court, adjourned to 31 August, and the figures remain unproven. But the point stands: money moved fast enough, and split across enough institutions, that recovering it now depends on dozens of banks checking their own systems and hoping the funds haven’t moved again,” Omoruyi said. 

According to him, that is “layering” as a live court filing, not a textbook typology.

Beneath the regulatory language, the mandate has three pillars every institution needs to internalise. Real-time monitoring is now the baseline: screening has to run inside the live transaction path, not as an overnight batch. Identity has to be woven into the transaction decision itself, not parked in the onboarding form; BVN and NIN data must actively inform risk scoring on every transaction.