Nigeria's President Unleashes Executive Order to Harmonize Virtual Assets

Nigeria has taken a significant step toward establishing a more cohesive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and digital assets with President Bola Tinubu's signing of the Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, 2026. This landmark order introduces a new framework designed to harmonize how various government agencies oversee virtual assets, blockchain technology, and related digital financial services. The initiative comes amidst a growing need for regulators to manage an industry that increasingly intersects with banking, securities, taxation, anti-money laundering (AML), and payment systems.

The move directly addresses a longstanding challenge within Nigeria's digital asset ecosystem: fragmented oversight and overlapping regulatory responsibilities. Prior to this order, agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), and various law enforcement bodies operated with varying degrees of oversight, often in silos. This fragmentation, as highlighted by a statement from the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, exposed the country to significant risks, including money laundering, terrorism financing, cybersecurity and data privacy threats, fraud, and revenue losses. The lack of a unified framework also created considerable uncertainty for businesses and investors as crypto assets increasingly functioned as payment instruments, investment products, and digital commodities.

To rectify this, the executive order establishes a Virtual Asset Council. This council will bring together key financial, revenue, and security agencies, aiming to improve regulatory coordination and support responsible innovation within the sector. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will chair the council, with its secretariat housed within the apex bank. The Presidency emphasized that the new order seeks to strengthen collaboration among these agencies, improve policy consistency, and create clearer regulatory pathways for operators, all while robustly protecting consumers and the broader financial system from illicit activities. Unregistered and fraudulent operators have often exploited these regulatory gaps, leading to significant financial losses for Nigerian families.

Officials assert that the order is meticulously designed to achieve two crucial, often seemingly conflicting, objectives: encouraging innovation while simultaneously strengthening oversight. Beyond enhancing coordination, the framework is expected to play a vital role in combating fraud, money laundering, terrorism financing, and tax evasion—risks that have garnered increasing regulatory attention due to Nigeria's growing crypto adoption. Crucially, the order is designed to close these existing gaps through supervisory coordination without introducing new layers of regulation or displacing the mandates of existing agencies. It also reflects a recognition that virtual assets now blur the traditional boundaries between currencies, securities, commodities, and payment systems, necessitating a more integrated regulatory approach.

For startups and other virtual asset service providers (VASPs), a more coordinated regulatory environment promises to reduce uncertainty. Previously, businesses often had to navigate multiple regulators with potentially overlapping or contradictory mandates. This executive order marks another significant milestone in Nigeria’s crypto journey, following a shift from more restrictive policies—such as the CBN’s 2021 directive limiting banks’ involvement with cryptocurrency businesses—to a more structured regulatory approach. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also been actively working to bring the industry under formal oversight, for instance, by admitting VASPs into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP). This executive order complements these existing efforts by prioritizing coordination rather than replacing the statutory responsibilities of individual regulators.

For Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital asset industry, the immediate impact may be less about new rules and more about the consistent implementation of existing regulations. A coordinated approach has the potential to lead to faster policy decisions, more consistent enforcement, and clearer guidance for businesses operating across payments, blockchain infrastructure, tokenized assets, and cryptocurrency services. However, the ultimate success will largely depend on how effectively the newly established Virtual Asset Council operates in practice and its ability to align agencies that have historically worked independently. If implemented effectively, the executive order represents a crucial step in Nigeria’s transition towards a more predictable and robust regulatory environment, one that protects consumers without hindering innovation in one of Africa’s fastest-growing technology sectors.