Research Document: Policy and Regulatory Inconsistency in Nigeria: A Major bane of Private investment

Posted Tue, Mar 30, 2021 8:40 AM

Nigeria’s experience with attracting investments for development purpose has shown that the lack of policy coordination is one of the major challenges for little achievements in this respect. Ameliorating the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for quick economic recovery have made it essential to change the current trend. This is one of the main reasons achieving policy consistency was highlighted as one of the Nigerian government’s key priorities in 2021 in NESG’s Macroeconomic Outlook for the year. In pushing this debate further, this report x-rayed how policy and regulatory inconsistency has constituted a significant barrier to boosting domestic and attracting foreign private investments. Four prominent drivers of policy inconsistency were highlighted - lack of central vision, ideology or goal, weak policy framework, assumption of independence of actions by policymaking institutions, and poor stakeholders’ consultation. Considering the country’s governance system, we recommend the institutionalisation of policy making process as a more practical approach to achieving both horizontal and vertical policy consistency in the short-term and a stable, investment-friendly environment in the medium long-term.