An Original Contribution to Understanding the Constitutional Limits of Legislative Economic Regulation in Nigeria

The constitutional limits on the legislative power to regulate economic activity in Nigeria, particularly the scope of federal and state authority to regulate trade, industry, and commerce under the 1999 Constitution as amended, have not been comprehensively examined through an original constitutional theory framework that accounts for Nigeria's federal structure, the protection of economic rights, and the constitutional basis for regulatory intervention. This study makes an original contribution by developing a Constitutional Economic Regulation Theory for Nigeria (CERT-NG) that provides principled criteria for determining the constitutional validity of legislative economic regulation, addressing the scope of legislative competence, the constitutional limits of regulatory expropriation, and the relationship between economic rights and regulatory objectives. The CERT-NG is developed through systematic analysis of the constitutional text including the exclusive, concurrent, and residual legislative lists and the constitutional rights provisions, analysis of 50 key Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions on legislative economic regulation from 1960 to 2023, and comparative constitutional economic theory from the United States, Canada, South Africa, and the European Union. Original contributions include an original Nigerian Legislative Competence Assessment Method for determining the constitutional validity of regulatory legislation at federal and state levels, a revised theory of the constitutional right to property applicable to regulatory restrictions, and an original analysis of the constitutional foundations of competition regulation, environmental regulation, and financial sector regulation. The study constitutes an original and comprehensive contribution to Nigerian constitutional economic law theory with direct implications for business law reform design.

Keywords: constitutional law, legislative competence, economic regulation, regulatory powers, Nigeria