Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Nigerian Financial Services: A Professional Analysis for Compliance Officers

This study examines the applied ethics of artificial intelligence in Nigeria's financial services sector, providing a philosophical analysis tailored to the professional needs of compliance officers, risk managers, and technology governance practitioners in Lagos, located in Nigeria's South West geopolitical zone. The rapid deployment of AI systems in credit scoring, fraud detection, and customer service within Nigerian banking has created professional ethical challenges that existing compliance frameworks have not adequately addressed. Using a professional practice design, the study draws on AI ethics philosophy from Virginia Eubanks, Kate Crawford, and Luciano Floridi's information ethics framework, supplemented by secondary literature published between 2020 and 2024. Structured interviews with 20 compliance officers, fintech ethics specialists, and philosophy academics in Lagos provide the primary data. Findings reveal that AI systems deployed in Nigerian banking generate discriminatory outcomes that systematically disadvantage low-income and rural account holders, reflecting training data biases that embed existing socioeconomic inequalities in automated decision-making. The study argues that compliance officers need philosophical competence in AI ethics to identify and challenge these harms, which are currently invisible to purely technical audit processes. Recommendations include mandatory AI ethics modules in the Chartered Institute of Bankers Nigeria's continuing professional development programme. Keywords: AI ethics, financial services, professional compliance, Nigeria, algorithmic fairness.