Meet Ngozi Aderibigbe

As a starry-eyed teenager, I began to contemplate the most daunting question I could imagine:  What do I do with my life?   It felt like a decision that would shape my entire future.  At 13, I was preparing to get into senior secondary school and as part of the rites of passage under the Nigerian curriculum, I needed to choose subjects that would fit into either the sciences, arts, or commercial paths – the paths that would define my career.  The weight of the decision was overwhelming, and my mind raced with doubts.  What if I made the wrong choice?  How could I know what I want in life?  What if I failed at something I was passionate about?

For as long as I could remember, I heard the advice that my career choice should simply reckon upon the skills which I already possessed.  That sounded easy.  I knew what I loved to do.   But as I reflected on what I loved, I found myself torn.

I was always the kid who loved to tinker, a skill that put me in more trouble than I can recall.  I was handy – I loved taking things apart just to see if I could put them back together.  I remember putting apart perfectly functioning boiling rings, cassette tapes, rechargeable lamps, etc., convinced that I could fix them.  Of course, my “fixes” did not always work out as planned.  Despite the mishaps, my passion for working with my hands never waned.

I was also fascinated by computers.  I had the  privileged of being introduced to them at an early age, a time when they were still a rarity.   As a pre-teen, I was already very dexterous in operating and computers – at a time when most of my colleagues had not even had the opportunity to see one.  I was not just a user –  I was a self-taught technician, installing and repairing PCs.  The idea of working with technology excited me, and I was drawn to the world of engineering.  So, naturally, I thought to myself that I could take the science path to become an engineer.  I nurtured this idea for a short while until it collided with the brutal realities of my academic profile. I hated chemistry.  While I could handle mathematics, biology, and maybe physics, pretty well, I had no mental tolerance for chemistry. So, I buried my fancy idea of being an engineer.

I slowly came to terms with the fact that my academic strengths leaned heavily towards the arts – subjects like English language, literature-in-English, Government. Added to this, my father had filled my head with captivating stories of great lawyers.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that law could be my path.  I settled for it – and, boy, am I glad that I did.

It is difficult to exaggerate the benefits of being a lawyer.  However, in my opinion, one benefit that trumps all others is that the law admits all other professions and areas of human endeavour.  The legal career could open doors of any field of endeavour.   Every industry – healthcare, technology, aviation, you name it – requires legal expertise.  As a young lawyer, this was a revelation!  I approached my legal career with this mindset, often looking out for connections between technology and the law. 

My career in intellectual property law started within 2 years of my being licensed to practice law, by sheer providence, but  It was love at first interaction.  I had joined one of Africa’s leading IP teams at Jackson, Etti & Edu, and  was privileged to learn from some of the best minds in the field. Although I had never taken a formal course on intellectual property law in my undergraduate days, my hands-on exposure to intellectual property at  JEE was very captivating.  Over seventeen years later, my attraction to IP law has not dimmed and will never. 

Over time, my focus expanded to include privacy law. The global conversation around data privacy, particularly the introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, piqued my curiosity. I began researching its implications for Nigerian businesses, which led to my first article on the topic, “Nigeria Has a Data Protection Regime.” That article marked the beginning of a journey into privacy law, a field that continues to fascinate me to this day.

As a lawyer, I’ve been fortunate to consult on intellectual property, data privacy, and commercial contracts for businesses of all sizes—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—across a wide range of industries. Yet, it is the technology sector that still has me starry-eyed. The tech world—both its nuts-and-bolts hardware and its cutting-edge digital innovations—awakens in me the same sense of curiosity and wonder that I had as a child. There’s something about technology that pulls me in, that fuels my desire to solve complex problems. Just like when I was a kid, I’m driven by the challenge of understanding, deconstructing, and reconstructing—this time, using legal solutions.

Today, I find myself navigating a unique space, balancing the world of intellectual property and privacy law with the ever-evolving landscape of emerging technologies. It’s a place where my passions intersect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.