IMMANUEL KANT’S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE AND THE NIGERIA’S DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM: TOWARDS ACHIEVING DIGITAL RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract

Though Nigeria has one of the fastest-growing digital economy in African continent, a digital boom so to say, there is a dire ethical challenge in data privacy, surveillance, and online misinformation. The present paper explores the possibility of using the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant as a framework for creating digital responsibility in the Nigerian digital arena. The approach is analytical. The focus is on how Kantian ethics can be employed to fecundate modern and responsible digital citizenship through an analysis and evaluation of already existing digital laws, enforcement procedures, and online habits. The discovery finds the existing procedures or practices ethically wanting insofar as human beings, the digital citizens are treated as means rather end in the Nigerian digital world. The positive elements of intrinsic worth, sense of duty, universalizability principle, and autonomy as found in Kantian ethics are indispensable ingredients in achieving humane and responsible digital ecosystem. It is the thesis of the paper that baring its absolutist tendency, a good application of Kantian categorical imperative can serve to fecundate responsible digital citizenship thereby curbing the above ethical deficiency.