A venture capitalist, Jude Ohalete, has identified fragmented regulation and weak implementation as major bottlenecks preventing Nigerian innovations from moving beyond the development stage.
Mr Ohalete said in an interview in Abuja on Tuesday that bureaucratic delays, policy inconsistencies and poor coordination among government agencies were slowing the transition of innovations from prototypes to commercially viable businesses.
According to him, while funding and infrastructure remain important to startup growth, regulatory challenges often compound the difficulties faced by innovation-driven businesses.
“Innovation usually dies in the handoff from prototype to market,” he said.
He explained that repeated approvals and unclear regulatory requirements increased costs for businesses and delayed the launch of new products and services. He said overlapping responsibilities among regulatory agencies also created uncertainty for investors and founders, making it difficult for promising ventures to scale.
To address these challenges, he proposed a single, binding innovation pathway to give startups access to a coordinated regulatory process and clear timelines.
He also advocated sandbox testing and automatic approval where agencies failed to respond within stipulated periods.
He noted that Nigeria already had elements of such a system through the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Regulatory Sandbox and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulatory Incubation framework.
However, he stressed the need to integrate these initiatives into a unified, cross-sector regulatory system that provides predictable pathways for innovators.
He recommended establishing a national startup and innovation portal to enable businesses to register, obtain licences, and route applications to the relevant regulatory agencies through a single platform.
He also called for mandatory inter-agency coordination for innovations involving areas such as payments, telecommunications, data and capital markets.
The venture capitalist also advocated expanding regulatory sandboxes beyond fintech to sectors including health, energy, logistics and artificial intelligence.
According to him, a live regulatory dashboard displaying application status, approvals and compliance requirements would improve transparency and reduce uncertainty for innovators.
He said the proposed mechanism would lower compliance costs and let founders devote more time and resources to developing their products instead of navigating complex government processes.
He added that clearer regulatory timelines could also encourage investment, as investors were more likely to back ventures with predictable pathways from innovation to market.
“Nigeria does not mainly need more innovation slogans; it needs faster regulatory conversion of ideas into permitted businesses,” he said.
(NAN)