Ethical Digital Leadership in Nigeria: A Contextual Framework for Equity, Privacy, Inclusion, and Responsible Decision-Making

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18592/moe.v12i2.21607

Keywords:

Ethical digital leadership; Digital equity; Data privacy; Inclusive education; Responsible decision-making; Nigeria

Abstract

Digital transformation has expanded educational leaders' authority over platforms, data, artificial intelligence, and technology-mediated decisions; yet, leadership research often treats adoption and ethics as separate concerns. This article develops a context-sensitive framework for ethical digital leadership in Nigeria. An integrative conceptual review combined theoretical synthesis with contextual policy analysis. The evidence base comprised 48 verified scholarly, legal, policy, and professional sources, including 15 Nigeria-focused records. Sources were coded for equity, privacy, inclusion, responsible decision-making, leadership functions, contextual conditions, and framework contribution. The findings show that ethical digital leadership is not a set of independent compliance tasks. It is an institutional capability through which leaders translate national policy, professional judgment, and stakeholder participation into four interdependent practices: equitable access and capability, privacy-by-design data governance, meaningful and accessible inclusion, and transparent, contestable, human-supervised decision-making. Nigerian conditions, especially infrastructure inequality, affordability, uneven digital competence, regulatory capacity, and rural-urban disparities, shape the feasibility and effects of these practices. The resulting framework links contextual conditions, ethical digital leadership capacity, four ethical practices, and safeguards and outcomes through a recursive learning loop. The article contributes six propositions for empirical testing and offers practical guidance for educational institutions seeking innovation without sacrificing dignity, trust, or educational justice.

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Published

2026-08-23

How to Cite

Onikoyi, O. A., Rowland, D. O., Onikoyi, Y. R. A., & Bankole, O. L. (2026). Ethical Digital Leadership in Nigeria: A Contextual Framework for Equity, Privacy, Inclusion, and Responsible Decision-Making. Management of Education: Jurnal Manajemen Pendidikan Islam, 12(2), 228–243. https://doi.org/10.18592/moe.v12i2.21607

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Vol. 12 No. 2 (2026): Management of Education: Jurnal Manajemen Pendidikan Islam

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Articles

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Copyright (c) 2026 Olawale Abayomi Onikoyi, Dorcas Oluwakemi Rowland, Yetunde Raliat Adeola Onikoyi, Olabisi Latifat Bankole

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