Book Title: Deregulation Law, Economics and Politics
Editors: Epiphany Azinge and Bolaji Owasanoye
Publisher: Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Pages: 230
Chapters: 9
Reviewer: Laura Ani

This book is of intellectual fascination and practical importance. The book further reviews the economic, political and legal basis for the deregulation exercise in Nigeria. The chapters in the book reflect the banking sector, Electricity Sector, Broadcasting as well as other essential utilities.

Also addressed in this book are the issues on corporate governance, deregulation of infrastructure and deregulation of public corporations. Herewith below is the review of each of the chapters of the book. This book has nine chapters and 230 pages.

In chapter One titled Regulation or Deregulation: Which way Nigeria: An examination of Trends in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The authors Olawale Ajai and Bolaji Owasanoye adequately review the conceptual considerations undergirding the regulation of the economy, the political economy of legal regulation of the economy and the Nigerian experience.

The authors states that an absolutely de-regulated economy in the sense of withdrawal of state intervention in the regulative process, the institutional context and the infrastructural sense according to Whites typology is probably an unattainable ideal.

The article  concludes by stating that the real issue is not one of regulation or deregulation but of whose benefit and in whose interest – the ordinary Nigerians or the comprador class as such exercises necessarily have to be relative and not absolute. The authors indicate that the return to regulation either of the whole or part of the erstwhile deregulated part of the economy is an admission of the failure of the SAP.

The second chapter on Deregulation of Infrastructure by Paul Idornigie, further encapsulates that Privatisation and commercialisation in Nigeria and the attraction of private investors to infrastructure delivery will be a mirage unless institutional reforms take place.

He further states that the duty of government to provide infrastructure or public utilities or public goods that was efficacious in the past has paled into government retreating and providing the regulatory environment in modern times to enable the private sector to provide the infrastructure.

Chapter Three titled issues in Deregulation of the Nigerian Electric Power Authority, the author Odiase Alegimenlen states that the capacity for realizing national development, Nigeria’s Electric Power sector requires substantial reform to modernize its infrastructure and administrative capacity which is to be achieved by sector wide deregulation and privatisation of the government holding which is to be divested and replaced by private ownership.

The author concludes that Politicisation by the elites and distrust of the reforms by the people, especially by the employees of NEPA/PHCN are endangering the process of deregulation. He also contends that a successful completion of the reform process up to full competition can only occur if all the affected parties are fully in agreement that there must be change. Also a concurrent issue to the success of deregulation of the sector is that the Nigerian electricity market requires the entry of viable competitors before the full process of deregulation is implemented.

The dichotomy faced in the banking industry in this chapter on Deregulation, Corporate Governance and the Nigerian Banking Sector by Konyin Ajayi, Nnamdi Dimgba and Femi Gbade,  asks very pertinent questions – does liberalisation and deregulation lead to growth and higher investment or does it lead to macroeconomic instability, bank failure and capital outflows in the countries which they are implemented?

These questions are answered using the experiences in the Nigerian banking sector, identified by the unbridled deregulation in the banking sector which led to an empowerment of a new class of super rich, whose activities led to a near collapse of the banking system and the economy.

To be continued…