Two of Nigeria’s oldest state-linked underwriters, NICON Insurance Plc and the Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation, have taken their quarrel with the industry regulator straight to President Bola Tinubu. In a paid open letter, they accuse the National Insurance Commission of a string of “unlawful” and “unconstitutional” money demands during the sector’s recapitalisation.
The letter is dated August 5, 2026, and ran as an advertorial. It is addressed to the President and signed by the Chairman of NICON Insurance Plc, Sir Abayomi Apata, and the Company Secretary for Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation, Mrs E. Rachel Kehinde-Famojuro. None of the claims has been independently verified, and NAICOM’s side does not appear anywhere in the publication.
The firms begin by reminding the President that he signed the new Insurance Act into law and called for fresh capital to give reform of the industry “a face.” That call, they say, they have answered in full — and then some.
Their argument runs like this. They did not really need new capital, because they already met the requirements. But a new regulatory formula for working out an insurer’s capital base threw out the value of their company properties — something they say breached the Act. So, in line with Section 16 of the new law, they paid 10 per cent of their capital base to the Central Bank of Nigeria, pointing to annexures A and B as proof of ₦6 billion paid by both companies to the apex bank.
They also say they pumped in fresh capital — an extra ₦20 billion into NICON and ₦30 billion into Nigeria Re — deposited for shares with one of the newly recapitalised banks, and cite further annexures to back it up. The advertorial carries Lotus Bank “Mudarabah Investment Note” documents showing ₦20 billion and ₦30 billion, along with Central Bank letters putting NICON’s insurance statutory deposit balance at ₦2.5 billion and Nigeria Re’s at ₦3.5 billion.
The real sting is what the companies call an illegal demand. They allege the regulator has asked, in writing, for 1 per cent of the new capital to be paid to it — a figure they put at ₦500 million — and brand the request “an illegal and unconstitutional demand.” Through demands like it, they claim, the regulator “has raked in over 30 billion Naira” from the recapitalisation, and now wants fresh capital moved to the Central Bank so the 1 per cent can be taken out of it — a move they say goes against the regulator’s own guidelines and the very Act the President signed.
Then there is a second charge. The regulator, they allege, “unlawfully demanded a total sum of 180m from both companies as a regulation fee for recapitalization” — money supposedly meant for a consultant hired to verify the exercise. “But we did not see any consultant,” they write.
Under a sharp heading, “My President is invited to note that,” the firms argue that the Commissioner for Insurance has no authorisation from the Finance Minister for what they call illegal demands “running into billions of naira, from the operators who are building the economy.” They stress that the Federal Government still holds a big stake in both companies, and point out that when the banks were recapitalised, “the Central Bank Governor did not demand any money from any bank,” and no bank was “fraudulently taken over or killed” — a pointed contrast with their own experience.
Leaning on Section 16(3) of the new law, they maintain that existing companies need only deposit the equivalent of 10 per cent of the minimum capital with the CBN — which, they insist, they have already done.
The letter ends with a list of prayers to the President. They want the Federal Ministry of Finance or another appropriate agency to investigate; they want NAICOM, having now seen their evidence, to “stop harassing the companies and stop killing insurance business in Nigeria”; they want the 1 per cent “recapitalization fee” refunded to every insurance company; and they want the shareholders’ funds they say were unlawfully taken returned immediately. They go further still, urging the President to order “a full-scale investigation of the fraudulent recapitalization exercise” to “clean the system and remove Back Swans,” and suggesting NAICOM “should learn from Mr Olayemi Michael Cardoso on how to recapitalise the Insurance industry,” since the CBN Governor “did not kill any bank during recapitalisation or sell their assets.”
They close on a line that lifts the stakes: “If Your Excellency finds any of the above facts incorrect or untrue, we are ready to face the full wrath of the law.”
Taken together, it is a remarkable public airing of a fight that would usually stay behind closed regulatory doors — a serving regulator accused, on a newspaper page bought and paid for, of unlawful conduct by the very firms it is meant to oversee. NAICOM’s response is nowhere in the publication, and the commission had not addressed the specific allegations as presented. For readers, the claims stay exactly that — claims by NICON and Nigeria Re — until the regulator is heard and the documents are tested.
