Abstract

The relevance of competition law to consumer protection has long been identified in developed economies. Although, private enterprise was vigorously pursued in these economies, there was, however, serious emphasis on fair trading and competition in the supply of goods and services to the consumer. [fn1] The idea behind this was to prevent the existence of monopolies in the marketplace. The belief is that when there is competition in the marketplace, the quality of goods and services supplied to the consumer would be high as each manufacturer or supplier would work assiduously to outdo the other. [fn2] The consumer would not only benefit from improved quality of goods and services, he would also get them at fair and reasonable prices. [fn3] Therefore, in this article, we examined the relationship between competition law and consumer protection law and suggest that it is necessary for a synergy to be drawn between these disciplines in Nigeria in order to evolve an effective legal framework for the protection of the consumer. footnote 1: See http://wikipedia.org/wiki/competition_law (accessed on 25 November 2011). footnote 2: See generally Taylor Martyn, ‘International Competition Law: A new dimension for WTO’ http://www.google.com/books (accessed on 25 November 2011). footnote 3: See S. Apinega, ‘The Goal of Anti-Trust Laws and the Concept of Consumer Welfare’ (208-2009) 4 (1) ABU Law Journal 161—174.