By Victor Ogiemwonyi
Marketconversations.stub-stack.com
The Gospel Of Free Markets
In 1980, the late Milton Friedman, a University of Chicago Economist, published his famous book: FREE TO CHOOSE accompanied by a follow-up documentary series, of the same title. This work became the “Bible” for market purists, who believed that the society’s welfare was better served by market forces and that the market possessed the best tools for allocating resources.
Friedman’s framework was widely acknowledged as the theoretical foundation for U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s reform policies. They served as the reform manual for their respective economic policies and influenced many others throughout the 1980s.
The documentary series was particularly effective in illustrating the pitfalls of well-intended government welfare policies. It showed how heavy government intervention and bureaucracy often caused these programmes to stall, or fail outright. One notable example was the U.K.’s Council Housing policy, which delivered far less than promised. The state of these council flats proved that when the government owns it, no one owns it and that when such sense of ownership is lacking maintenance inevitably collapses, turning them into a slum.
Nigeria’s own 1004 Estate, in Victoria Island, Lagos, served as a similar example before its eventual privatisation. It was becoming a slum amidst the opulence that the Victoria Island, neighbourhood conveyed. Truth be told, the estate has improved dramatically since its privatization.
Lately, questions have resurfaced regarding why market policies appear to be failing in Nigeria. While many accept that current reforms are the only way out of our economic crisis, the delay in tangible results has led many to question the validity of the premise itself.
The Pain Of Reforms And The Analogy Of Surgery
Reforms inevitably come with pain, but such pain should not be permanent. In a recent forum debate, an analogy was made of a patient requiring urgent surgery for a life-threatening ailment. The process was to be in various stages of: stabilisation, surgery, healing, and rehabilitation, each of which requires adequate attention to ensure the patient does not leave the hospital worse than when he/she came. Every step of a national reform must be meticulously thought through, just as the executors must be reasonably competent at every stage.
Cracks In The Market Promise
Two widely shared social media posts last week brought these questions to the fore. The first was a piece by Professor Pat Utomi, a founding senior faculty at the Lagos Business School.
A prominent “Market Apostle,” Utomi openly admitted he is no longer comfortable with the assumption that liberalization naturally leads to growth and prosperity for all, citing his experience with the financial services liberalization and privatization of the 1990s in Nigeria especially in banking—where a few became stupendously wealthy while the masses suffered.
He blamed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for turning banking licenses into a “bazaar,” ignoring Nigeria’s stage of economic development at the time. This era, indeed, saw the licensing of 89 banks and several finance companies, only for many to collapse, causing massive unemployment, disruption to the economy and the destruction of personal wealth and trust deficits.
Prof. Utomi pointed to the Oxford professor, Joseph Stiglitz’s characterization of the IMF as a “debt collector” for Wall Street banks.
He now views stabilization outcomes as akin to a Ponzi scheme, freeing up frozen credit lines to create an illusion of vitality while offering little in the way of genuine entrepreneurship or market efficiency.
The Failure of Regulation: The MM2 Example
The second viral post, featured a young man complaining about the sudden spike in MM2 Airport car parking fees—rising from ₦300 a few years ago to ₦3,500 today. This fee is charged even for a seven-minute pickup, because no “off-ramp” for Pick-ups exists for arriving passengers, at that airport.
This is also after a toll is paid at the International Airport end just to reach the MM2 terminal.
Meanwhile, FAAN has doubled its own fees at its tollgates while still manually selling paper tickets in 2026.
Standard airports worldwide such as JFK in New York, or George Bush Intercontinental in Houston, provide off-ramps for pickups and drop-offs. Even at London’s Heathrow, where tolls exist, passengers have viable alternatives like trains, buses, or taxis. The Airport Taxi option available in MM2 starts at N25,000 – N30,000 to get to the Island.
The failure to provide an off-ramp at MM2 is unacceptable. It is a “rent-collecting” mentality where the private sector behaves exactly like a predatory government agency, forcing users into a car park that charges 10x of the original fee for a carpark built over a decade ago and fully depreciated facility. This is a clear example of regulatory failure.
And A Key Reason Why Market Policies Fail In Nigeria
If the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) were alive to their duties such exploitation would not happen. Their obsession with fee collection and playing police has made consumer protection a secondary concern.
Market policies do not fail in Nigeria because they are inherently “bad.” They fail, because we lack the institutional capacity, the necessary regulatory frameworks and, at times, the sincerity of purpose to see the policies through.
Unless we build the support structures required for markets to function, we will continue to chase results that never arrive.
Ogiemwonyi, a retired Investment Banker writes from Ikoyi, Lagos.
