Nigeria's Crypto Reset: Can Unified Regulation Deliver?

The order brings together the CBN, Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Nigeria Revenue Service, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the National Security Adviser under a single coordinating structure.

SEC Director-General Dr Emomotimi Agama told Sandmark the reforms establish "a clear jurisdictional map, a single coordinated filing window and a standing mechanism for aligning rules across agencies."

The order also arrives as Nigeria's Senate advances the Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Regulation Bill, suggesting the executive and legislative branches are moving in parallel to modernize the country's digital asset framework.

Split since 2021

Nigeria's crypto regulation has long been split across institutions. The CBN barred banks from serving crypto exchanges in 2021, then reversed that in late 2023. The SEC issued its New Rules on Issuance, Offering Platforms and Custody of Digital Assets in May 2022, setting out registration requirements for exchanges, custodians and VASPs, but enforcement lagged adoption.

Dr Ajibola Asolo, a lawyer specializing in capital markets and fintech, told Sandmark the fragmentation was structural rather than incidental. "VASPs and digital asset platforms have had to navigate overlapping regulatory requirements from multiple agencies, creating uncertainty and increasing compliance burdens," he said.

Recent legislation has also complicated the SEC's jurisdiction: the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 limits the Commission's authority to digital assets that qualify as securities under a four-part test in the Act's fifth schedule, which mirrors the Howey test used by US courts to identify investment contracts. Stablecoins that pay no return are unlikely to meet it, Asolo said, leaving open who supervises them – while yield-bearing versions could fall to both the SEC and the CBN.

The scale of the market makes those gaps difficult to ignore. Speaking at a webinar hosted by Chainalysis and SEC Nigeria, Agama said more than 33% of Nigeria's population of more than 220mn was involved in digital assets, most of them under the age of 30.

SEC investigators told the same event that Nigerians had lost an estimated 1tn naira (roughly $650mn at 17 Jul rates) to crypto-related Ponzi schemes over the past 25 years. A further 1.3tn naira ($850mn) went through the CBEX scheme, which collapsed in April 2025; Chainalysis traced more than 300mn Tether (USDT) deposited into it by Nigerian victims.

Who arbitrates disputes

The Virtual Asset Council's proposed structure draws a functional boundary: activities that are securities in nature fall under the SEC, while payment, settlement and non-securities custody services are registered through the CBN.

Where responsibility is disputed, the Council will arbitrate. A new Virtual Asset Office, housed within the CBN, will serve as the Council's secretariat, coordinating filings and information sharing through a shared supervisory technology platform.

The SEC told Sandmark it would remain the lead regulator for the market's "investment dimension," including exchanges, token offerings, custodians and investment-related platforms. "The Executive Order does not create a new regulator, and it does not diminish the statutory powers of existing agencies. This is critical," Agama said.

Morris Ebieroma, co-founder and chief information officer at Nigerian exchange Quidax, told Sandmark the order is "the clearest indication of where Nigeria is headed," pointing to groundwork already laid through the SEC's Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme in 2024 and a CBN sandbox pilot for VASPs announced in March 2026.

Asolo was more cautious. A coordinating council "does not automatically remove institutional friction between regulators," he said, noting that the CBN, SEC and the Nigeria Revenue Service are guided by different statutory objectives – monetary stability, investor protection and revenue generation – which may lead them to contrasting positions on stablecoin supervision or asset classification.

Because the order preserves each agency's independence rather than creating a supra-regulator with override powers, he expects the Council initially to operate as "the forum through which these differing regulatory perspectives are reconciled," not a body capable of resolving every dispute immediately.

Asolo said the split could still make licensing more predictable, "provided that the coordination envisaged under the Executive Order is effectively implemented," pointing to Kenya, where the capital markets regulator and central bank are moving towards a similar division of duties. The same allocation in Nigeria would "leverage each regulator's existing expertise while ensuring businesses are subject to a coherent and predictable regulatory framework."

Where the naira fails

IMF figures show Nigeria accounts for around 60% of stablecoin inflows into sub-Saharan Africa since 2019.

The naira lost 41% of its value against the US dollar in 2024. Nigerian demand for stablecoins was "primarily a response to financial pressure, not speculation," said Alvin Kan, chief operating officer of crypto wallet provider Bitget Wallet.

Cost is the other driver. Sending money to sub-Saharan Africa cost an average of 8.5% in the third quarter of 2025, the world's most expensive region for remittances, according to World Bank data.

"A cross-border payment between Nigeria and Ghana that used to take up to three days now settles in minutes," Ebieroma said, noting that capital previously could sit at a correspondent bank outside Africa for days before clearing.

The regulatory challenge is no longer preventing stablecoin adoption but connecting activity already happening at scale to regulated banking infrastructure, Kan said – channelling it into compliant systems "without removing the everyday utility driving adoption."

The 30-day test

The order's limitations are structural as much as practical. It coordinates existing agencies but does not itself create new statutory authority, and much of its force depends on the Senate bill passing and on the Harmonised Implementation Framework, due within 30 days, resolving the ambiguities Asolo identified without adding further procedural complexity.

Asolo questioned whether additional legislation should be the immediate priority at all. Nigeria, he argued, should first "consolidate, harmonize and implement" the rules it already has, including the SEC's 2022 digital asset rules and the Investments and Securities Act 2025, rather than layering on further legislation that could produce another set of overlapping obligations.

There are also real operational hurdles: the shared supervisory technology platform will need to work across agencies with different systems, procedures and regulatory cultures, while meeting data-protection requirements.

"Consumer protection and market oversight require effective supervision, coordinated enforcement and adequate resourcing across the relevant regulatory agencies," Asolo said, calling the order a promising development whose effect would depend as much on institutional capacity as on design.

The Central Bank of Nigeria did not respond to Sandmark's request for comment.