Nigerian economist and professor Pat Utomi recently expressed his frustration with Nigeria’s judiciary and political system, attributing the nation’s poverty to their failure to uphold their responsibilities.
Taking to his X (formerly Twitter) account, Utomi reacted to James Robinson’s discussion on CNN following Robinson’s Nobel Prize win for Economics in 2024.
Robinson, along with his co-authors, highlighted Nigeria as a country that knows what it needs to do to prosper but fails to act. Utomi agreed, recalling his own book Why Nations Are Poor, published a decade before Robinson and Daron Acemoglu’s Why Nations Fail. Both works emphasize the critical role of institutions in determining a country’s economic success. Utomi underscored Robinson’s assertion that economic growth is deeply political, and noted his own long-standing frustration with Nigeria’s politicians.
What struck Utomi most, however, was what Robinson left unsaid—how central the judiciary is to Nigeria’s stagnation. According to Utomi, Nigerian lawyers have failed in their duty to uphold the rule of law, property rights, and a fair judicial process, thus contributing more to Nigeria’s misery than any other profession.
Reflecting on his international consultancy experience in the 1990s, Utomi recalled how unreliable courts, weak property rights, and political instability discouraged foreign investors from coming to Nigeria. The situation has worsened since then, with judicial capture undermining the legitimacy of elections and damaging the rule of law.
Utomi also referenced Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists by Ragu Rajan and Luigi Zingales, crediting former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis for fostering a judicial environment that promoted entrepreneurial growth in America. In contrast, Utomi criticized Nigerian judges for their lack of vision and their tendency to stifle, rather than support, innovative business ventures.
In conclusion, Utomi called on Nigerian lawyers to acknowledge their role in the country’s decline and take urgent action to reform the judiciary, protect property rights, and ensure free and fair elections. Only then, he argued, could Nigeria hope to reverse its economic misfortune and pave the way for prosperity.
