Financial Law Reforms for Economic Resilience in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria's Regulatory Experience
Abstract
Africa's largest economy, Nigeria, presents a compelling case study for examining how financial legal frameworks can either accelerate or constrain economic resilience. The paper examines the legal architecture governing Nigeria's financial and banking sector, with particular focus on recent reforms, their regulatory effectiveness, and their capacity to advance the country's One Trillion Dollar economy agenda, at a moment when African states face compounding pressures from global market volatility, digital disruption, and post-pandemic fiscal stress. Adopting a doctrinal and comparative methodology, the paper draws on primary legislation, subsidiary regulation, institutional reports, and comparative legal scholarship. It finds that while recent reforms have meaningfully modernized the regulatory landscape, their transformative potential remains unrealized. Structural impediments, including weak enforcement mechanisms, institutional fragmentation, overlapping statutory mandates, and politicized appointment processes, continue to undermine regulatory independence and expose the system to regulatory capture. Critically, the absence of a dedicated statutory framework for digital financial services leaves the rapidly expanding fintech sector in legal uncertainty. The paper maps the gap between legislative intent and regulatory outcome in Nigeria's reformed financial law regime, diagnoses the institutional deficiencies perpetuating this gap, and advances targeted reform proposals to strengthen Central Bank governance and accountability; insulate appointment processes from political interference; enhance consumer protection mechanisms; and enact a sector- specific statute for digital financial services. The paper concludes that statutory refinement and institutional realignment are not merely technical corrections; they are preconditions for a banking sector capable of anchoring Nigeria's continental economic ambitions.