Report reveals corruption, anti-business disposition in Nigeria’s regulatory agencies

Regulatory agencies in Nigeria have been indicted in a report, which reveals that corruption, duplicity of functions, poor service orientation, and several anti-business dispositions persist in their operations.

The Cost of Compliance Report, which was presented to the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, PEBEC, at its first virtual meeting of the year, showed that regulatory agencies had not been on the same page with the council’s effort at removing impediments on the paths of businesses.

Laolu Akande, Spokesman to Nigeria’s Vice-President, said in a release on on Wednesday that the meeting presided over by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo resolved that chief executive officers and heads of some federal government regulatory agencies be presented with the outcome of the recent report, which exposes major pitfalls in their operations.

Osinbajo directed that CEOs and heads of such government regulatory agencies involved should be presented with the outcomes and interaction should take place regarding some of the worrying disclosures in the report of the survey conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, PwC.

“The report revealed human issues that are not unavoidable. Regulatory agencies play important roles in ensuring businesses are able to thrive seamlessly without inhibition.

“Doing otherwise would only jeopardize the government’s efforts in creating conducive business environment. 

“If the environment on account of regulatory authorities is so difficult or expensive, such that people are discouraged or it doesn’t make sense for people to do business, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot in a manner we can only blame ourselves. These are human issues and we must do something very serious about these issues.

“I am in full support of holding our CEOs to account because they, in turn, must hold their staff to account. If there is systemic corruption, bribery and extortion, and nobody is held to account, there is a problem,” the release quoted Osinbajo as having said at the meeting.

According to Prof Osinbajo, the plans of the Federal Government in growing the economy and changing the lives and livelihood of Nigerians for the better is largely dependent on the business environment in which they operate.

He said government plans around sustaining economic growth, improving job creation and opportunities, depend entirely on the environment in which people have to do business.

Others present at the PEBEC meeting were the Ministers of Industry Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo, who is the Vice Chairman of PEBEC; Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed; Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; Information, Lai Mohammed; Interior, Rauf Aregbesola; Budget and National Planning (State), Clem Agba; Special Adviser on Ease of Doing Business, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, and Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed, representing the National Assembly among other top government officials and representatives from PwC.