Emmanuel Oijagbe argues that strategic adoption of artificial intelligence could turn Nigeria’s public sector from slow and opaque to agile, data-driven and citizen-centred. He surveys early pilots in tax, customs and health, then diagnoses obstacles: fragmented data, low digital skills, weak ethics oversight and funding gaps. He sets a roadmap: national AI policy, secure cloud infrastructure, talent pipelines, regulatory sandboxes and multistakeholder governance to anchor trust and inclusion.