Tinubu Tames the Crypto Wild West 🪙

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed an executive order on Friday aimed at unifying the country's fragmented digital asset regulatory framework, according to his special adviser Bayo Onanuga. The directive is intended to harmonize the regulation of virtual assets, strengthen cooperation among the nation's financial, revenue and capital markets agencies, protect citizens from fraud, and safeguard the integrity of the financial system while enabling responsible innovation. It also established a virtual asset council headed by some of the nation's top financial regulators to direct related policies, and directed the Nigerian Revenue Service to update its policies on digital assets.

Onanuga clarified that the order does not create a new regulator or transfer powers between agencies, with each institution retaining its full statutory mandate and independence. He added that the framework coordinates their work rather than replacing it, and that registration will follow the nature of the activity and the asset involved, a structure designed to close gaps through which unregistered operators have previously escaped oversight. The Nigerian Revenue Service had already moved to tighten oversight in January, announcing under the Nigeria Tax Administration Act that crypto service providers were required to link transactions to tax identification numbers and, in some cases, national identification numbers.

Nigeria has recorded some of the strongest growth in digital asset adoption in Africa. The International Monetary Fund reported in June that the country accounted for about 60% of stablecoin inflows within sub-Saharan Africa since 2019 and recorded approximately $59 billion in crypto inflows between July 2023 and June 2024. The Fund warned that the policy challenge is to narrow the gap that made the workaround in cross-border payments attractive, while ensuring that new risks remain contained, and that doing so requires a clear strategy open to innovation but anchored in sound macroeconomic policy and effective regulation.