Former National Insurance Commission commissioner Mohammed Kari has urged Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele to reject political intervention in the regulatory sanctioning of Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation and NICON Insurance, two firms linked to Senator Jimoh Ibrahim.
The call comes after the Ministry of Finance, through Permanent Secretary Raymond Omachi, directed NAICOM on August 6, 2026, to suspend enforcement actions against both companies. The regulator had earlier revoked Nigeria Re’s licence and excluded NICON from the list of insurers that met recapitalisation requirements under the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025. Both firms subsequently challenged NAICOM in court.
In a letter to Oyedele, Kari argued that allowing the affected companies to bypass statutory requirements through political channels would undermine fair competition in the insurance sector. He noted that more than 90 percent of operators had complied with the new capital rules, completing the full process of raising fresh capital, depositing reserves with the Central Bank of Nigeria, undergoing verification, and settling regulatory fees.
“NICON and Nigeria Re continue to seek special dispensation through political channels, petitioning your Ministry to suspend regulatory directives, capital checks and escrow requirements,” Kari wrote. He warned that treating compliance as mandatory for most operators but optional for a few would erode statutory regulation.
Kari, who previously served as managing director of both institutions, provided historical context. NICON and Nigeria Re were established by the federal government in 1969 and 1977 respectively, initially serving as pillars of the domestic insurance industry by retaining premium capital, underwriting public assets, and building local expertise. However, he said both lost market leadership after their privatisation in the mid-2000s, subsequently suffering governance failures, excessive leverage, balance-sheet weaknesses, and unpaid claims.
He contrasted the insurance sector with banking and pensions, where operators generally comply with recapitalisation and other statutory requirements without seeking political intervention to weaken their regulators. “Why then should insurance operators treat regulatory compliance as a matter open to political lobbying?” he asked.
Kari cited Sections 8(6) and 8(9) of NIIRA 2025, which prescribe the procedure for licence cancellation without assigning a role to the Ministry of Finance. He argued that executive intervention could only be justified where a financial institution’s failure posed genuine systemic risk, but maintained that neither company currently holds the market size or influence to constitute such a threat. “These are no longer the market giants they once were decades ago,” he said, describing their current market footprint as “virtually insignificant.”
The former commissioner called on the federal government to resist granting special carve-outs or acting as an informal court of appeal for failing operators. “NAICOM is the state’s empowered regulator; it must be permitted to apply the law equally to every company, whether privately owned, historically state-created, or under asset management control,” he said.
The episode tests the independence of insurance regulation in Nigeria and whether statutory frameworks will prevail over political patronage in the enforcement of sector reforms.
