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It has become increasingly popular and fashionable in Nigeria to enact penal laws which regulate and impinge on business activities. Although scattered corruption and economic crime provisions are found in some of the pre‐1980 statutes, the new phenomenon of enforcing economic regulations through the criminal law instrumentality in Nigeria attained great visibility from about 1984 and has become firmly entrenched in the last eight years.

The last few years have seen a steady crescendo in the panic over the threat of organised crime in society. In fact, society is increasingly realising that it is involved in a life and death situation, a war whose battleground is continually expanding as every clash uncovers new frontiers to be broken down and new elements to be fought — just like the fight against some new and unknown disease — a struggle society cannot afford to lose.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the general direction and pattern of modern economic and financial crimes statutes in Nigeria.

This paper examines Nigerian economic and financial crime statues.

This paper identifies the trend and features, which are common to all the statutes irrespective of economic and financial crime covered by them.

This paper shows that although Nigerian economic and financial crimes statutes have evolved gradually from Military era Decrees, and target different aspects of economic and financial crimes, there are certain features, which are common to all of them.