By Ibrahim Abubakar
Today, commercial disputes in Nigeria, and in fact globally, no longer arise only from decisions made in the boardroom, signed contracts or face-to-face dealings. Increasingly, they are shaped by systems; software-driven processes, digital platforms, automated workflows, and interconnected technologies that run continuously and often invisibly. The courtroom, however, still speaks the language of yesterday’s commerce.
The legal claims from these disputes are often pleaded in familiar terms: breach of contract, negligence, statutory non-compliance. Behind those labels lie technical realities: how a platform works, how data moves, how automated decisions are made, and how responsibility is shared between developers, service providers, and users.
Nigerian courts have continued to apply settled legal principles to these emerging disputes. However, the growing volume and complexity of technology-driven cases raises a practical question: are judicial structures designed for an earlier era still sufficient to resolve disputes whose complexity lies less in legal interpretation and more in technical comprehension?
This is not about questioning the competence of judges but rather about whether the system itself adequately supports them. Just as Lagos State has specialised divisions for land, probate, and commercial matters to promote efficiency and expertise, technology-driven cases may now require similar institutional attention.
This article argues that beyond training judges, there is a need to consider internal judicial specialisation; dedicated divisions within State High Courts where judges can consistently handle technology-related matters with the depth and continuity they demand.
The nature of technology-driven commercial disputes
Technology-driven commercial disputes are not a new branch of law; they are familiar legal conflicts playing out in new surroundings. When these matters reach the courtroom, they still appear as claims for breach of contract, negligence, infringement of intellectual property, misrepresentation, breach of confidence, or statutory non-compliance. What has changed is not the language of the pleadings, but the context in which these disputes now occur and the kind of facts a court must engage with in order to resolve them.
When business relationships break down, the resulting disputes often involve questions that traditional commercial cases did not present: who owns digital assets, who bears responsibility for a data breach, how liability should be allocated for defective software, or how to assess damages from cybersecurity incidents.
Consider a dispute where a software solution failed to meet agreed specifications, because customer data was compromised or because an automated system produced unintended results. What looks like a simple breach of contract may require the court to understand machine learning models, API integrations, and whether the error originated in design, implementation, or data quality.
Another defining feature of these disputes is the nature of the material placed before the court. Judges are now asked to engage with system logs, audit trails, technical reports, and industry standards that were never designed with courtroom scrutiny in mind. For many judges trained in a largely paper-based commercial world, these materials present a level of complexity quite different from conventional documentary evidence.
Furthermore, technology disputes cut across traditional legal boundaries. A single case may contain elements of contract, intellectual property, data protection, consumer protection, and regulatory compliance simultaneously. This overlap makes it difficult to fit them neatly into existing judicial compartments.
Why existing judicial structures are increasingly strained
Over the past five years, those of us in practice have begun to see a clear shift in the kinds of commercial disputes finding their way to court. What began as occasional disagreements over electronic payments or software contracts has evolved into a steady stream of claims touching data governance, platform failure, cybersecurity breaches etc.
Our judiciary has always adapted impressively to new forms of dispute. Nigerian courts absorbed banking issues, oil and gas conflicts, and complex corporate litigation without losing their footing. Yet technology-driven cases pose a different kind of pressure. They change the very texture and nature of evidence and the way commercial decisions are made. Concepts such as consent, control, negligence, even possession, that we have long treated as straightforward, begin to look different when transactions occur through algorithms and remote servers.
Most High Courts remain organised around traditional divisions, general civil causes, land, probate, family, and in some jurisdictions, broad commercial lists. These structures were designed for disputes that can be proved through familiar documents and oral testimony.
Today, however, judges are increasingly confronted with server logs, metadata, audit trails, APIs, and automated processes.
The questions before the court are often partly legal and partly technical, yet the structure of adjudication assumes they are entirely the former.
The strain is already visible in everyday proceedings. Hearings are frequently taken up by arguments over what electronic records actually represent or whether a digital process can be trusted at all. Valuable court time is spent explaining how a platform works before the real legal issue can even be identified. This creates the risk that decisions are reached without a full grasp of how the underlying systems operate.
There is fragmentation of experience. Because these matters are assigned like any other civil case, similar disputes may be handled by judges with very different levels of exposure. One court may gradually develop an understanding of issues concerning electronic payment or software contracts, while another approaches the same issues with assumptions drawn from a paper-based world. Without a focal point where experience can accumulate, it becomes difficult for consistent and predictable principles to emerge.
These challenges are made heavier by the realities of our system; crowded dockets, limited research support, and procedural timelines that leave little space for technical absorption. Expecting every trial judge, in the midst of an already demanding workload, to master the mechanics of algorithmic decision-making is to place an institutional problem on individual shoulders.
The limits of training as a stand-alone solution
In Nigeria, judicial training has traditionally been the primary institutional response to every emerging area of law. Whenever new forms of disputes arise, the immediate solution has been to organise seminars, workshops, and continuing education programmes for judges.
This approach is valuable and, in many respects, indispensable. It broadens exposure and equips the Bench with foundational understanding of unfamiliar subjects. However, training, by its nature, addresses knowledge gaps at the level of the individual judge; it does not address the deeper question of how the system receives and manages complex cases.
Technology-driven cases, in particular, demand sustained and repeated engagement. A short course on electronic evidence or digital payments may introduce the concepts, but it cannot replace the understanding that grows when a judge repeatedly engages with similar technical material, listens to competing experts over time, and begins to recognise the patterns behind industry practices. That kind of familiarity is cultivated through daily work, not occasional lectures.
The realities of our dockets make this even more difficult. Judges in general divisions move from land disputes to criminal trials, from family matters to shareholder conflicts, and then suddenly to a case about a failed software deployment or a data breach. In that environment, specialised knowledge is hard to retain and even harder to apply with confidence and consistency.
Training will therefore always remain essential, but it cannot carry the burden alone. On its own, it treats the symptom rather than the design challenge.
What is needed is a structure that allows whatever knowledge is gained to be used continuously and institutionally, instead of relying on individual effort each time a new case arrives.
The case for dedicated technology-focused divisions
Specialisation is not new to Nigerian Courts
Our courts are no strangers to specialisation. In Lagos and a number of other states, High Courts already run separate divisions for land matters, probate, commercial causes, family proceedings, and similar subject areas.
These arrangements emerged from a practical recognition that certain kinds of cases require continuity of experience, consistency of approach, and judges who engage with similar issues repeatedly can build a steady, institutional understanding of them. Technology-driven commercial disputes now present the same need.
Why technology cases demand concentrated adjudication
When technology-related disputes are scattered across general dockets, three problems arise. First, the learning curve restarts with every case, increasing the risk of avoidable error. Second, inconsistent approaches to similar legal questions create uncertainty. Third, proceedings become slower and more expensive as courts and counsel spend disproportionate time educating the court rather than resolving the dispute.
A dedicated division within existing High Courts would address these concerns without creating any new layer of courts. Technology-related claims, whether arising from software contracts or fintech operations, would be channelled to judges who handle them regularly. With time, those judges would develop the same practical fluency we already associate with commercial or land divisions.
Learning from comparative experience
The argument for structured specialisation is not merely theoretical. Other jurisdictions confronted with similar pressures have responded by creating focused pathways for complex, technology-related disputes. For instance, the Technology and Construction Court in England and Wales emerged from a recognition that disputes involving engineering projects, digital systems, and technical contracts were overwhelming general commercial courts. Rather than create a new hierarchy, the solution was organisational: a division within the existing King’s Bench Division of the High Court staffed by judges who routinely engage with such matters and supported by procedural tools suited to technical evidence. Over time, its decisions developed a coherent body of principles that businesses could rely on and lawyers could advise upon with greater certainty.
The lesson for the Nigerian judiciary is to appreciate the underlying logic. Specialisation reduces the learning curve, minimises conflicting decisions on similar questions, and creates a more predictable environment for investment and innovation. Familiarity with technology-related disputes breeds competence, not bias.
How the division could be structured in practice
A technology-focused division need not be elaborate to be effective. Its foundation would lie in clear case-allocation criteria. Matters involving software contracts, platform liability, data protection, fintech operations, intellectual property in digital assets, cybersecurity incidents, electronic payments, and technology procurement could be administratively channelled to the division at the point of filing.
Equally important would be the way evidence is managed. Judges should have access to neutral assessors and technical experts in areas such as digital forensics, software engineering, and financial technology.
Additionally, procedural rules should expressly address electronic discovery, handling of metadata and logs, and presentation of algorithmic evidence. Active case management, fast-track timetables, and limited adjournments would reflect the commercial reality that technology-related disputes lose value the longer they linger.
As earlier noted, none of this requires the creation of a new court. It requires the same administrative imagination that produced the commercial, land, and probate divisions we already rely on in several states.
Why this conversation matters now
Nigeria is no longer a peripheral consumer of technology; it is a producer of digital businesses with regional and global reach. Billions of naira now move through digital platforms rather than counters. Government processes are migrating to code. Contracts are concluded by clicks, and corporate value increasingly revolve around data and software rather than physical assets.
Yet the structures for resolving disputes from this new economy remain largely those built for an earlier commercial world. When a court struggles to make sense of these technology-driven cases, it is not only the parties before the court that feel the effect. Confidence in the system weakens, investors begin to factor in Litigation risk, entrepreneurs become cautious, and innovation slows down.
This is therefore not a conversation about convenience for lawyers; it is about economic governance. The way our courts handle technology-driven disputes sends a message to the market about whether the legal system truly understands the ground on which modern business now stands. That message will shape investment decisions long before it shapes legal textbooks. If that message is not convincing, the cost is borne far beyond the courtroom.
Conclusion
At its heart, this article is about aligning our justice system with the realities of modern commerce.
Technology has altered how agreements are made, how value is created, and how harm occurs. The courts that interpret those relationships must be organised in a way that allows understanding to grow rather than restart with every new case.
Training will help; expert evidence will assist; diligence will remain essential. But without deliberate structural specialisation, these efforts will continue to operate at the margins. A technology-focused division within our High Courts would acknowledge that commerce has changed and that adjudication must change with it.
For starters, the Chief Judges of Lagos, Abuja, and Rivers States should convene working groups to pilot technology divisions and the National Judicial Council should develop case allocation criteria and training curricula for judges. The Nigerian Bar Association can also contribute by providing input on procedural rules.
The infrastructure of digital commerce is already here. Our judicial infrastructure must catch up.
Read the remaining part of this article on www.guardian.ng
Abubakar is the managing partner, New Era Attorneys.
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