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Nigeria has unveiled two professional bodies dedicated to competition and antitrust practice, the Institute of Competition and Antitrust Practitioners (ICAP) and the Antitrust and Trade Laws Practitioners Association (ATLAPA), in a move promoters say will professionalise the enforcement of competition law and protect consumers.
The double unveiling took place on Wednesday in Abuja, before a gathering of senior lawyers, regulators, business leaders and members of the diplomatic corps.
The Chairman of the occasion, Alhaji Aminu Abdulkadir Mbamba, said the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2018 had given Nigeria the law and established the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to enforce it. But he said a law without competent custodians was “akin to an aeroplane without adequate crewmen.”
“Today, we are not just unveiling an Institute and an Association, we are turning on the tap of fairness in our markets,” he said, adding that ICAP and ATLAPA would train the lawyers, economists and compliance officers who would advise government and businesses.
Mbamba, who described himself as a businessman who has “tasted” both fair and tilted markets, said Nigeria’s status as Africa’s largest market, with rising digital platforms and growing investor interest, made fair rules urgent. “If we do not seriously set the rules of fair play now, we will wake up to monopolies that kill enterprise and cartels that punish consumers,” he warned.
The traditional ruler urged the government to use the bodies as technical partners, told businesses to embrace competition law because “compliance is now a competitive advantage,” and assured Nigerians that professionals would now be trained to fight for them when prices are unfair or choices are removed.
Speaking on behalf of the Board of Trustees, Chief Paul-Harris Ogbole, SAN, said Nigeria had, for decades since independence, had regulators and laws but no dedicated professional body for competition and antitrust practice. “We had no custodians. No institute to train, to set standards, to discipline, to advise. Today, that gap is closed,” he said.
He explained that ICAP would build capacity and set standards, while ATLAPA would serve as the voice, network and advocacy platform for practitioners, academics and advocates, “like the Bench and the Bar.”
Ogbole said the African Continental Free Trade Area, which has opened a market of about 1.4 billion people, and the growing control of data by digital monopolies made local expertise essential. “We cannot be a nation of more than 230 million people and be intellectually dependent on foreign experts for our own economic sovereignty,” he said.
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Addressing the Foundation Fellows, who will bear the title F.ICAP, he said they had been inducted “not for honour alone, but for service.” He said the title meant they would not help clients form cartels or draft agreements that kill competition, and that they would mentor young lawyers and businesses to comply with Section 59 of the FCCPA, which prohibits agreements that prevent, restrict or distort competition. The Institute, he added, would demand continuous professional development and ethics, and would enforce discipline. “This is not a chieftaincy title. It is a professional trust.”
Ogbole outlined five promises:
ICAP will run a world-class curriculum, with partnerships with the International Competition Network and sister institutes in the United Kingdom and the United States.
ATLAPA will be a fearless voice for reform, filing policy and amicus briefs before the Competition Tribunal.
The two bodies will collaborate with the FCCPC, the Competition Tribunal, the National Assembly and other regulators as partners in nation-building.
They will do everything permitted by law to keep markets fair and protect consumers, from the market woman in Garki to the student buying data and the small business seeking shelf space.
They will uphold the rule of law. “Competition law without rule of law is nothing but tyranny,” he said.
Mbamba then formally unveiled both bodies, saying: “Today, Nigeria is blowing the whistle. Fair play, fair price for every Nigerian.”
