💬 "It’s time to stop asking if local capital can be mobilised and start shaping how we unlock it."

That was one of the standout takeaways from our recent webinar, 'Navigating the Regulatory Landscape for Private Capital in Nigeria,' hosted in collaboration with AVCA - The African Private Capital Association. The webinar was an honest, solution-driven conversation among fund managers and institutional stakeholders.

In an extensive dialogue, we unpacked some of the most critical bottlenecks to private capital growth and identified realistic, collaborative pathways for change.

🔍 Key Themes:
• Regulatory fragmentation continues to create inefficiencies, with overlapping (and sometimes conflicting) mandates across PENCOM, SEC, CBN, NAICOM, and FIRS.
 • Pension and insurance funds remain underutilised, largely due to policy constraints, perceived risk, and unfamiliarity with the private equity asset class.
 • The trust gap between regulators and fund managers limits innovation, making risk mitigation harder, not easier.
 • Tax ambiguity around fund structuring, carried interest, and SPVs discourages local fund formation and deters foreign LPs.
 • The sector must improve storytelling through data, impact, and transparency to shift perceptions and policy.

📣 Advocacy Priorities:
🔹 Reform pension investment guidelines to support patient, long-term capital flows into private equity and venture.
 🔹 Establish a consolidated private capital policy framework, harmonising definitions and expectations across regulators.
 🔹Work with regulators to update legal frameworks around fund structures and investor protections.
 🔹 Clarify taxation policies with FIRS and promote incentives for onshore domiciliation.
 🔹 Invest in regulator capacity building — through secondments, training, and co-learning.

🛠️ Low-Hanging Fruit:
 ✅ Institutionalise a multi-regulator private capital roundtable supported by PEVCA and aligned agencies.
 ✅ Develop an annual impact scorecard highlighting the sector’s contributions to jobs, innovation, and inclusive growth.
 ✅ Roll out a regulatory sandbox model to encourage safe innovation and fund experimentation.

This is not just about capital, it’s about economic transformation, and the policies that can unlock it.

📩 Let’s build a stronger, smarter capital ecosystem for Nigeria.