On 22 April 2026, the Federal High Court (FHC), Abuja Judicial Division, per Omotosho J, delivered judgment in UBA Plc v FCCPC, on the long-standing friction between the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018 (the “FCCPA”) and the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act, 2020 (the “BOFIA”). The central question was whether, in the light of Section 65 of the BOFIA, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (the “FCCPC”), retains jurisdiction to summon, investigate and receive complaints arising from disputes between banks and their customers, or whether that jurisdiction now rests exclusively with the Central Bank of Nigeria (the “CBN”).
The Court answered in the FCCPC’s favour: Section 65 restricts only the FCCPC’s competition jurisdiction over banks, leaving its consumer-protection jurisdiction intact.
This article argues that, while the outcome is defensible as a matter of policy, the reasoning that produced it does not withstand scrutiny. It is our position that the Court’s reading of Section 65 sits uneasily with the section’s own text, with other provisions of BOFIA it declined to examine, and with the settled canons of statutory interpretation it purported to apply. We conclude by stating that the sounder response is not judicial reinterpretation on appeal, but a legislative amendment of the FCCPA to align Nigeria with the clearer allocation of regulatory authority seen in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and South Africa.
