On Tuesday, December 2, 2025, a body known as the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) held its 2025 Awards and Gala Night at the State House Banquet Hall, Abuja. The event was for the “recognition of outstanding government agencies and individuals for their efforts in improving Nigeria’s business environment.”
The awards were essentially based on PEBEC’s 2025 Business Facilitation Act (BFA) performance report, which assessed how ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) complied with transparency and efficiency requirements under the BFA 2022. The report reviewed progress in service efficiency, transparency, monthly reporting, complaint resolution, and service-delivery innovation across MDAs between January and October 2025.
PEBEC is a Nigerian government initiative established in July 2016 to improve the country’s business environment. It is chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima, and comprises 24 members from various government levels. In sum, PEBEC’s efforts aim to attract investments, promote sustainable growth, and improve Nigeria’s business perception.
The PEBEC Awards ceremony has since become an annual event, where “top performing government agencies and individuals” are honoured for their efforts in enhancing Nigeria’s business climate. However, apart from the wide publicity and wasteful celebrations that mark the annual awards, it is difficult to notice the tangible impact of the activities of PEBEC in nearly a decade.
In other words, the MDAs and individuals which PEBEC is assessing their service-delivery quality and efficiency have not exhibited any appreciable improvement to deserve any awards. If anything, the Nigerian business environment has been getting more uncompetitive, leading to the now famous ‘Exodus’ of many multinationals from Nigeria in the past couple of years. This trend still subsists.
In proper perspective, the PEBEC Awards is an incestuous arrangement under which a government body “selects and rewards” mainly MDAs. Hence, PEBEC itself noted in its report that “despite recorded progress, sustained reforms, increased automation, improved institutional discipline will be crucial to accelerate service delivery transformation and transform Nigeria’s competitiveness.”
It is therefore unsurprising that some of the topmost ranking MDAs in PEBEC’s report are among the agencies whose modus operandi constitute the worst disincentives to clients/public. Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), for instance, which number among the topmost five performers are known to have usually deployed frustrating bureaucracy and red tape in their service delivery over the years.
In point of fact, their combined inefficiency has for too long created room for many Nigerian importers and/or exporters to resort to the use of the seaports and facilities of some other neighbouring West African countries. The methods of the NCS and NPA have also to some extent aided and abetted smuggling across several routes around the country.
Advertently or otherwise, the operations of these maritime agencies seem to have been stifling Nigeria’s blue economy: the nation’s ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and ocean health. Of all the numerous critical functions of the NCS, the agency seems to have focused mostly on revenue collection, to the detriment of the rest, including trade facilitation, and border security, etc.
It is the same with the NPA, whose official functions centre on managing and regulating the country’s ports and harbours. NPA today focuses more on revenue generation and tariff collection, to the neglect of critical functions like facilitation of international trade, maritime safety and security, among others. For the better part of this year, both the NCS and the NPA have virtually been at loggerheads with their stakeholders over outrageously increased tariffs and service charges.
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) which came first in the PEBEC report (with a score of 90.6 percent) is relevant only in a very narrow enclave: oil and gas sector. NCDMB which was established in 2010 by the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act is only mandated to make procedures that will guide, monitor, coordinate and implement provisions of the NOGICD Act signed into law on April 22, 2010.
Although in the past close to three decades, the NCDMB has been involved in the review and approval of Nigerian Content plans developed by operators, it is the high wave of energy transition across the globe that has impacted the oil and gas sector in Nigeria. Most of the international oil companies (IOCs) that deserted Nigeria or went deep offshore, were largely driven by their energy transition strategies.
The exiting IOCs being acquired in part or in full by Nigeria’s local operators was all in pursuit of less fossil fuel business, and more of renewable energy undertakings by those multinationals. So, the plethora of divestments and acquisitions (some sort of indigenisation) in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria in recent times were not necessarily owing to the work of NCDMB. Many of the IOCs were on the ‘flight to safety’, and journey to ‘greener pastures.’
PEBEC in its report also showcased a few other otherwise obscure entities as doing well in the improvement of the investment climate of Nigeria. However, if other KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are applied in the assessment of the performance of the MDAs, the results would rather show that the activities of most of them are inimical to Nigeria’s business climate competitiveness.
For example, it is some of the policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), especially the very high interest rate (MPR) regime, that has been scorching not a few Micro, Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (MSMEs). This tight monetary stance has mainly been attracting foreign portfolio investments (FPIs), and not foreign direct investments (FDIs) that are direly needed to make the economy productive.
Specifically, out of the $5.64 billion imported into the country in the first quarter of 2025, FPIs accounted for a lion’s share — $5.20 billion or 92.25 percent; with a mere 2.5 percent or $126.29 million coming from foreign direct investments (FDIs). This shows that investors are only interested in short-term liquid assets, owing largely to Nigeria’s generally uncompetitive business climate.
Similarly, the CBN’s foreign exchange (FX) policies have also devalued the local currency (Naira) to the extent that the cost of importation of machineries, raw materials and other inputs by businesses in the country has become prohibitive. Thus, the very high interest rate environment, coupled with the huge cost for the procurement of FX have added much to the un-competitiveness of Nigeria’s business climate.
Also, largely under the purview of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Budget and National Planning, the relevant agencies charged with the making of annual budgets have wittingly relapsed to the distortion of the country’s normal budget cycle (January to December). Barely two weeks to the end of 2025, next year’s national budget is not yet in place; no 2026 Appropriation Bill!
The confusion and uncertainty generated by the delay in releasing the budget usually pose problems for businesses, who normally take a cue from the Appropriation Bill in drawing up their own plans and strategies. Added to this is the existential threat that insecurity has become in Nigeria; which is why investors will opt to invest in financial assets rather than setting up (physical) operations.
In the face of all these, it becomes at best doubtful, and at worst, suspicious, what message PEBEC is sending by giving awards to bodies whose activities largely cause deterioration of Nigeria’s business climate. PEBEC’s initiatives in this regard could be riddled with ‘insider abuse’ which played out in giving awards to some assistants of the Vice President who is chairman of PEBEC.
PEBEC, in reality, is a ‘back office’ unit in the Presidency, and should operate as such, rather than giving awards that motivate nobody but itself. Truth be told: Nigeria’s business climate remains largely uncompetitive, and PEBEC’s awards can do very little to change it!
