A Happy New Year to you, you and you. May 2023 be an amazing year!
Sometime last week, we threw open nominations and voting, for the Regulatory Dundies Awards 2022. I am glad to announce that the final results are in. 🥳
Before we get into that, 2023 marks a new milestone for the Nigerian Regulations Newsletter! Just yesterday, we crossed our 1000 Substack subscribers’ dash line.
That brings us to a total subscriber base of 3519 readers across all platforms, including Substack and LinkedIn. Thanks to all persons and team reading and sharing our work across Nigeria, and beyond.
Our New Year Resolution is to do more quality and consistent work in 2023. And I think things may get wayyy interesting this year but let me not get ahead of myself.
The Awards!!!
For our Second Edition of the Regulatory Dundies Awards, we have 8 Categories as shown below:
As done at the Maiden Edition, nominations are gathered from all of you, our readers and considered experts and policy analysts. Respondents were permitted to vote via Google and Twitter Poll. The choice of a winner for each category is based on a collation of responses from the average of the two polls gathered on Twitter and Google Forms, combined with an assessment of our regulatory analytics and data on the laws, regulations, and policies and their overall impact on market operators and stakeholders.
While we anticipate that not everyone will agree on the Final Winners selected across each category, we will take any appeals or disagreements into consideration for the Regulatory Dundies Awards 2023 at the end of this year. Thank you!
MOST INNOVATIVE REGULATOR OF THE YEAR, 2022
The ‘Most Innovative Regulator of the Year’ category is designed to acknowledge the number of developments, and policy directions provided by a regulator for operators in a particular sector.
The nominees are; the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And the WINNER is the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council which issued several key regulations impacting consumer protection over digital lending, and certain key regulations on controlling anti-competitive trade practices.
Winner
MOST IMPACTFUL REGULATORY REFORM OF THE YEAR, 2022
The second category is the ‘Most Impactful Regulatory Reform for the Year’. This category recognizes the most impactful law, regulations, policies, or directives that impacted the conduct of business within Nigeria through the course of the year. (Note: For this year, you may read “Impactful” as “Significant”)
The nominees are; the Nigeria Startup Act 2022, the CBN Naira Currency Redesign Policy, the NGX-SEC Listing of StartUp/Big Tech Companies and the SEC Digital Assets Offering Rules.
And the WINNER is the Nigeria Startup Act, 2022, a law that promises to introduce far-reaching startup-friendly reforms into Nigeria (one of Africa’s foremost tech-investment destinations). You can read our discourse on it here.
DUMBEST REGULATORY REFORM OF THE YEAR, 2022
Nigeria’s regulatory ecosystem can indeed be a madhouse on some days. This third category is dedicated to recognising some of the laws, regulations, directives or policies which are either poorly planned or certainly just have some ridiculousness wrapped around them or have a damaging impact on the doing of business within Nigeria.
The nominees are; The Lagos Lottery and Gaming Authority charging the public a fee to access copies of the law, the ARCON - Approval of digital adverts before upload, and the CBN - Cash Withdrawal Limit Order, NUPRC handling of the SEPLAT-Exxon oil deal.
And the WINNER is the ARCON Approval of Digital Ads.
NEXT-RATED REGULATIONS AWARD OF THE YEAR, 2022
So we switched up the name for this category a little, from the previous “Rising Star Award”. As usual, this fourth category recognizes the draft of laws, policies, or regulations released in 2022, and may be impactful if signed off on (hopefully in 2023).
The nominees are; the CBN Draft Operational Guidelines for Open Banking 2022, the NERC Mini Grid Draft Regulations 2022, the Business Facilitation Bill 2022, the Arbitration and Mediation Bill, 2022 and the Data Protection Bill, 2022.
And the WINNER is the CBN Draft Operational Guidelines for Open Banking which seeks to deepen the ecosystem for Application Programming Interface (API) banking and payments in Nigeria.
HUMANITY AWARD OF THE YEAR, 2022
The fifth category is the ‘Humanity Award for the Year’. This category recognizes the laws, regulations, directives or policies which has a direct positive impact in making the lives of people within Nigeria easier through the course of the year.
The nominees are; the PENCOM Guidelines for using RSA Balance as a Down Payment for Mortgage Holders, the Lagos State Guidelines on Safe Termination of Pregnancy for Legal Indications and the FCCPC Guidelines for Digital Lending.
And the WINNER is the PENCOM Guidelines for Using RSA Balance for Mortgage Holders.
READERS’ CHOICE: NOTABLE MENTION CATEGORY OF THE YEAR, 2022
The sixth category for the Regulatory Dundies Award is the ‘Notable Mention Category Award for the Year’. This category recognizes the laws, regulations, directives or policies which do not particularly have any category but are worth noting by viewers due to their immense impact on Nigeria’s business landscape.
The nominee and winner for this category is the Electoral Act, 2022. Interestingly, the Electoral Amendment Bill now turned into the Electoral Act was awarded our Rising Star Award last year. Notably, while the Electoral Act is a civic legislation, it’s predicted and expected that the law will play a pivotal role in shaping Nigeria’s forthcoming election in Q1 2023. (Readers, please get your PVC and vote in the coming elections!)
READERS’ CHOICE: HEADLINE OF THE YEAR, 2022
The seventh category is the ‘Readers’ Choice Award: Headline of the Year’. Yes, yes, our readers love the pun headlines, and we had fun crafting them! This category ranks the different favourite Newsletter headlines of readers throughout the year.
The nominees are; “Another TechCabal?”, “DAO Art Worthy”, “Not So Sweet In The Middle”, and “Pissing Upstream”.
And the WINNER is the “Pissing Upstream: NNPC Takes a dig at Spelat-Exon Deal”.
Also, we pour one out for the following headlines that couldn’t see the light of day cos we were too busy! - “Panic! At the Discos”, “Mo Money Mo Problems”, “ASUUn As Possible”.
READERS’ CHOICE: MEME OF THE YEAR, 2022
Okay, for our eighth and last category, we have the ‘Readers’ Choice Award: Meme of the Year’. This category pays respect to the meme culture which is part of our identity in Nigerian Regulations, to make information much easier to digest.
And the Nominees are; “NITDA Code Meme”, “NNPC and Seplat-Exxon Meme”, and “CBN, SEC & Startup Council Meme”.
A final note for the Regulatory Dundies Awards ceremony, I’d like to say a big thank you to all of you, readers, and editors - Theophilus Oladipo, Maryam Asabe, etc., and Layeni Eliz’beth, for all your assistance through 2022.
I was gonna add the Regulatory Forecasts, but omo, it’s plenty! So, see you guys later in the week!