The Federal Government has warned that Nigeria’s legal gridlock is actively suffocating economic growth, revealing that commercial lawsuits take an average of 15 years to grind through the court system.
To break this bottleneck, Taiwo Oyedele, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, is calling for the immediate establishment of a specialised, fast-tracked commercial tribunal to restore investor confidence and unlock a target $1 trillion capital market.
Speaking in Abuja at the Second Biennial Conference of the Capital Market Academics of Nigeria (CMAN), Oyedele stated that the current 15-year timeline required for business disputes to clear the High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court creates paralysing uncertainty and drives up the cost of doing business.
While Nigeria already possesses an Investment and Securities Tribunal (IST) to handle capital market friction, its operations have remained largely skeletal. Oyedele’s proposed Special Commercial Dispute Resolution Tribunal would fundamentally modernise the process. The dedicated body would be staffed by judges and arbitrators with deep financial sector expertise, driven by digital case management systems, and bound by strict, mandatory timelines to guarantee rapid rulings for businesses, suppliers, and joint-venture partners.
Beyond fixing the judiciary, the Minister set an aggressive national benchmark: growing Nigeria’s capital market to $1 trillion over the next decade. Pointing to the economic scales of South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, and Indonesia, Oyedele argued the target is entirely realistic given recent macroeconomic and banking reforms, but warned policymakers to stop celebrating empty metrics.
To address this, he proposed an “investment conversion rate” framework to strictly track how many corporate inquiries actually translate into physical factories, capital inflows, and employment. “Nigeria today attracts enormous global attention, but attention is not investment,” Oyedele said. “Investment announcements are not capital flows. Memoranda of understanding are not factories. Expressions of interest are not jobs.”
The Minister also took aim at public discourse surrounding national debt, urging analysts to stop treating borrowing as a moral failure. He argued that the absolute size of public debt is secondary to its utility. Borrowing to fund productive, high-return infrastructure is a responsible strategy for job creation, he noted, while refusing to borrow out of fear denies the country critical expansion opportunities. “The relevant question is never simply how much debt. It is always debt for what, at what cost, against what return, and repaid on what terms,” he said.
Corroborating the need for urgent capital market depth, Senator Osita Izunazo, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market, expressed deep concern over a massive corporate imbalance in the country. He revealed that out of more than four million registered companies in Nigeria, a mere 150 are listed on the domestic stock exchange, a metric he labeled as “absolutely wrong” and a major deterrent to foreign investors tracking market depth.
Regulators are looking to institutional overhauls to correct these imbalances. Dr. Emomotimi Agama, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), noted that the market is undergoing aggressive restructuring following the enactment of the Investments and Securities Act and a fresh 10-year Capital Market Master Plan. Agama emphasised that navigating these changes requires rigorous, evidence-based regulation born from close collaboration with financial academics.
To sustain this momentum, Professor Uche Uwaleke, CMAN President, urged the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission (NUC) to aggressively bridge the gap between theory and industry practice. Uwaleke recommended that the NUC adjust its university accreditation rules to allow accomplished, retired bankers and investment professionals to teach as adjunct professors, counting their real-world experience toward faculty promotions alongside traditional academic publications.
